Just like in the States there's a strong push afoot to require ISPs retain user activity logs for a year or two. In the UK, as part of the Home Office's communications data bill, wireless and landline broadband ISPs are being required to collect all communications records and keep them for at least a year. According to local news reports, ISPs may be required to route the data via a government-approved "black boxes" which will decrypt the message and then pass the data back to the ISP for storage. Granted it sounds like the government hopes to sniff that data in transit, using technology the likes of which AT&T and others are rumored to be using in cooperation with the NSA. "If you're having to route all traffic through one box, it's going to cut down on connection speeds," warns a UK ISP association. "The hardware can only look at a certain amount of traffic per second."