'Hi. how are you? Thought you might like the attached image. See you soon. Have you seen our latest offers? Your shopping order has been received and will be delivered on Thursday. Thank you for your order."

Fascinating reading? I don't think so, but the above few examples of my average e-mail correspondence will apparently have intelligence officers in raptures so I thought I would save them a job by printing the extracts here.

According to Home Office sources quoted on a London newspaper website this week, MI5, MI6 and the National Criminal Intelligence Service (NCIS) want legislation to give them Big Brother-style powers.

The new powers would require communication service providers to log phone calls, e-mails and Internet usage and keep the details for seven years.

They believe these powers would help them track paedophiles, terrorists and cyber criminals but the alarm bells are already ringing for those interested in civil liberties.

Concern that the security services would be able to build up stacks of information about individuals, their habits, tastes, shopping trends and even friends, has prompted fears of snooping and prying.

The Campaign Against Censorship of the Internet in Britain (www.liberty.org.uk) is working to stop such moves although it has come under attack from hackers who are now under investigation.

The campaign group Liberty (www.liberty-human-rights.org.uk) also has an interest in this issue while the intelligence services give out some information at the NCIS website www.ncis.co.uk.

But while we would all shudder at the electronic equivalent of having our post steamed open, as users of this new technology we can't have it all and need to make some cyber society decisions.

If we want consumer protection from rip-off e-commerce sites and the ability to screen out porn from our family systems then we have already accepted some level of policing and nannying in what started out as a no-rules seemingly anarchic system.

* Previous columns from The Cyber Space can be found at www.thisisthenortheast.co.uk/leisure/cyber.html