@Strappy
"Some commenters appears to have missed the point of this project. "
yes, yes they do, you prime amongst them.
"It's not going to scan content"
We're told. But you've missed yet another pint, although you're by no means alone in that, the name of the project is the "interception _MODERNISATION_ program", which rather suggests an upgrade of present capabilities. If you think that present interception capabilities don't extend to content monitoring than you're living in la la land.
"(there's already plenty of systems that can do that)"
Name some. I can think of one. I'd be interested to hear of the others.
"it's going to map the connections between people. Only the most naive terrorist would send an email containing such obvious trigger words as "bomb" and "assassination" and those emails would doubtless be flagged and filed..."
You have just contradicted yourself, postulating here that content will indeed be scanned.
"but I doubt serious action would take place."
Why ? There have already been high profile cases where people were detained and charged based on such things, or don't you watch the news at all ?
"If the Security Service suspects that a potential terrorist cell is communicating with other cells, however, they will be able to track communications through IMP to locate the others even if those comms are fully encrypted."
They can do that already, got software for it and everything, real time even. Why spend £12bn quid to reimplement an existing, and effective, system ?
"Sure, there are wider implications for personal privacy but I don't recall seeing mass protests about the number of CCTV cameras that watch your every movement."
So it's OK as long as no one protests is it ? And again, you miss the point entirely, an expectation of personal privacy has fuck all to do with objections to this project.
"It's exactly the same type of data gathering as carried out by supermarkets through loyalty cards or Phorm targeted advertising that's been reported by El Reg recently.
Knowing how people move about, communicate or even idly surf is now valuable data for mining."
Either you are a troll, or you are magnificently clueless. That argument is so stupid that I can barely bring my myself to refute it, but just in case you actually believe it, and in no particular order : You seem to have missed the fact that people aren't happy about phorm, this is about as far from targeted advertising as sheep are from nuclear physics research, supermarket loyalty cards don't track peoples movements or intercept their communications, and you seem to be confusing commercial marketing activities with mass surveillance by the state, which suggests some rather serious mental distress on your part.
"To bastardise the Marshall McLuhan quote, the medium has become the message."
If, by "bastardise" you mean "take completely out of context, misunderstand, change and then use in a way that renders it totally meaningless and makes makes you look like an utter knob", then yes, otherwise, no. It's very clear from that statement that you haven't actually read McLuhan, who had nothing whatever to say about mass interception of communications. Do you even know who McLuhan was ? Prat.