The government has started making plans for a nationwide database that will hold the names of all 72 million mobile phone owners in the UK. In the scheme everyone who wishes to buy a mobile phone will have to present their passport or another opfficial document at the point of purchase so that they could be placed on the register.

The government has already been in talks with Vodafone and other major phone companies, about creating the register – which will contain all mobile owners’ names and addreesses.

The move is aimed at monitoring those 40 million who own prepaid mobiles, where names and credit card details are not necessary when purchasing. Although it is true that these prepaid phones are popular with criminals and terrorists- due to the anonymity that they provide- millions of innoccent and law abiding citzens also use these phones.

The government has made plans for this now to overcome a flaw in plans being drawn up at GCHQ, the communications arm of the intelligence services, to create a “Big Brother” database- which details email and telephone records of everyone in Britain. This database would not be of any use to MI5 or the police if more than half of mobile phones in the country were not registered. GCHQ has already received £1 billion to fund this project.

Within Whitehall there has been fierce criticisim of this proposition as being “disproportioante and potentially unlawful”- forcing Home Secretary Jaqui Smith to waith until next year to unveil the plans to dramaticall increase State surveillance.