The government is watching you - official

The 'snoopers' charter' - through which the government has forced the monitoring of every phone call made, website visited and email sent - officially became law on Thursday.

While the almost universal rejection of the data retention orders from the opposition was widely expected to derail the governments plans, last minute political manoeuvring saw it through the House of Lords.

Deputy opposition leader, Baroness Blatch had proposed a 'fatality motion' – a way of killing off the Order in an event that happens only a few times in a century – but it was scuppered when the government threatened to return the favour by nixing every Order that any future Tory government tried to pass.

And so the proposals were passed unopposed.

But a couple of amendments were made that went down well with privacy campaigners: the Interception of Communications Commissioner will now have to have to inform individuals when their privacy has been improperly invaded and Baroness Blatch said that the government would have face a Private Members Bill designed to make the Order more palatable to the opposition.

Despite claims from legal authorities that the Order contravenes the European Convention on human rights, the Order will now oblige all communication service providers to keep records of who their customers phoned, where from, who and when they emailed for 12 months, as well as recording what websites they visited.

While the government claims that the Act is necessary for purposes of national security, a number of authorities not known for their anti-terrorist activities, including the ministry for gambling, will be able to get their hands on users details.

Simon Davies, head of Privacy International, has vowed to fight the law through the courts and puts its successful political passage through the Lords down to the ISPs themselves: "They have acted in a reprehensible manner all the way through, sitting on the sidelines. They never raised the whole issue of privacy, they just had a fever-like concern to get their costs underwritten by the government", he told silicon.com. "They should hang their heads in shame."

James Blessing, technical development at business ISP Zen, says that service providers are caught between a rock and a hard place, defending their users' interests and at the same time having to be seen to be doing the 'right thing'.

"With an act like this, you can't fight the idea – you can't turn round and say you won't monitor your users after 9/11 – but you can fight bits of the Act, but then you're seen as petty and people think it's just a case of ISPs not wanting to spend money", he told silicon.com.

The Act's passage through the Lords wasn't the worst case of political wrangling however. It seems the big names in the ISP world have led the way in smoothing the legislation's path through parliament.

Blessing said: "BT couldn't be seen to be objecting, AOL are a bespoke service with filtering and controls already in place, Freeserve don't want to be seen to be kicking up a fuss and with the smaller ISPs, they're just trying to carve out a niche and keep things going."