Big Brother might not be reading, but I am.

They most certainy are. A very good friend of mine was a fibre optic engineer and did a lot of work for the military. As he had a very good security clearence he also did work for the Ameruicans as well. the NSA operate a very large listening post in the UK. Menwith hill. Do a Google search. They record every telephone call, both mobile, satalite and landline, fax, email and internet activity. As already mentioned they havethe ability to screen these for certain words and they can even search for a particular voice pattern, That is how they eventually captured or rather killed Pablo Escobar.

So yes be worried. As they say " Just because you are paranoid doesn't mean that they aren't all out to get you ! "

Have a look here

http://www.euronet.nl/~rembert/echelon/mwh.htm

Sorry mate, i just find this unbelievable. You are actually saying EVERY single phone call is being recorded. It would be logistically impossible to record the whole of the UK's phone calls in a 24 hour period. There are just too many.

And then who or what listens to them all? It would take a year to listen to one days worth of calls !

I just find it unlikely and logistically impossible.

Certain calls are tapped and then recorded - for sure. Political firebrands, members of the IRA, the BNP for sure. But ALL of Joe Public - i dont think so.

I know for a fact working in the telecoms industry that the caller details are obviously stored - for billing, and all SMS messages are recoverable, but the calls are not routinely recorded. It would take terrabytes of storage every hour. Where is this storage facility? For now surely it must be the size of Belguim by now.

I also know that Joe Public has certain privilege rights or levels which in times of war can be turned off or restricted, freeing up the mobile phone network for govt and military.

Entirely possible for computers to flag any communication containing certain keywords, verbal or written. These 'suspicious' communications can then be investigated further.