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Backlash rises over British plan to bolster eavesdropping

Critics include lawmakers from ruling coalition

By Alan Cowell

 |  New York Times  

  April 03, 2012

British lawmakers and rights activists joined a chorus of protest Monday against plans by the government to give the intelligence and security services the ability to monitor the phone calls, emails, text messages and Internet use of every person in the country. In a land where tens of thousands of surveillance cameras attest to claims by privacy advocates that Britain is the Western world’s most closely monitored society, the proposal has compounded arguments that its citizens live under what critics call an increasingly intrusive “nanny state.’’

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