The government is watching you. Or they can, anyway. Hewlett-Packard announced on Thursday a new way for telecommunications service providers to store information about what their customers are doing, and quickly retrieve it at the government’s request. The HP Data Retention and Guardian ONline (DRAGON) system is intended to help governments fight against global terrorism, organized crime and drug trafficking.
The need for systems like DRAGON is driven by tightening government legislation that determines what records service providers must keep on hand. Although actual content is never stored, the details of tracking land lines, cell phones, VoIP phones, email, voicemail, Internet usage, text messaging, and other features can add up to terabytes worth of data every year.
