The Communications Capabilities Development Programme (CCDP) is a UK government initiative to extend the government's capabilities for lawful interception and storage of communications data.[1] It would involve the logging of every telephone call, email and text message between every inhabitant of the UK,[2] [3] (but would not record the actual content of these emails)[3] and is intended to extend beyond the realms of conventional telecommunications media to log communications within social networking platforms such as Twitter and Facebook.[4]
It is an initiative of the Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism at the Home Office, whose Director is Tom Hurd. The office pursued a very similar initiative under the last Labour government, called the Interception Modernisation Programme,[2] [5] which after apparently being cancelled, was revived by the Liberal-Conservative coalition government in their 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review.[6]
The effort to develop it will be led by a new government organisation, the Communications Capabilities Directorate.[7] [4] In March 2010, it was reported that the Communications Capabilities Directorate had spent over £14m in a single month on set-up costs.[8]