British authorities on Thursday unveiled an ambitious plan to log details about every Web visit, email, phone call or text message in the U.K. – and in a sharply-worded editorial the nation's top law enforcement official accused those worried about the surveillance program of being either criminals or conspiracy theorists.

The government insists it's not after content. It promises not to read the body of emails or eavesdrop on phone calls without a warrant. But the surveillance proposed in the government's 118-page draft bill would provide authorities a remarkably rich picture of their citizens' day-to-day lives, tracking nearly everything they do online, over the phone, or even through the post.

All that data would be kept for up to a year – ready for browsing whenever anyone in authority wanted it. In some cases, the bill envisages monitoring the information in real time.

Home Office Secretary Theresa May said in an editorial published ahead of the bill's unveiling that only evil-doers should be frightened.

"Our proposals are sensible and limited," she wrote in The Sun, the country's top-selling daily. "They will give the police and some other agencies access to data about online communications to tackle crime, exactly as they do now with mobile phone calls and texts. Unless you are a criminal, then you've nothing to worry about from this new law."

Yet plenty of people were worried, including a senior lawmaker from May's governing Conservative Party.

"This is a huge amount of information, very intrusive to collect on people," David Davis, one of the proposal's most outspoken critics, told BBC radio. "It's not content, but it's incredibly intrusive."

Human rights defenders were aghast. Privacy group Big Brother Watch said the proposal risked turning Britain into a "nation of suspects." Civil rights organization Liberty said the law would mean the "indiscriminate stockpiling of private data."

Authorities and civil libertarians have been debating the plan for weeks, but Thursday marked the first time that the government itemized exactly what kinds of activity it wanted to track.

The list is long.

The bill would force providers – companies such as the BT Group PLC or Virgin Media Inc. – to log where emails, tweets, Skype calls and other messages were sent from, who was sending them, who they were sent to, and how large they were. Details of file transfers, phone calls, text messages and instant conversations, such as those carried over BlackBerry Messenger, would also be recorded.

The bill demands that providers collect IP addresses, details of customers' electronic hardware, and subscriber information, including names, addresses, and payment information.

What May didn't mention in her editorial – and the Home Office left off its press release – was that the government also is seeking to keep logs of citizens' Internet history, giving officials access to the browsing habits of roughly 60 million people – including sensitive visits to medical, dating, or pornography websites.

Prefer to send mail the old-fashioned way? That would be monitored, too. Address details and other markers printed onto envelopes would be copied; parcel tracking information would be logged as well.

Officials say they need all that information to stay on top of a rapidly-changing technological landscape. Britain's online child protection agency said Thursday it was missing out on a quarter of the traffic used by child pornography networks. In an editorial in the Times of London entitled "Trust me, I need to know about your emails," Scotland Yard chief Bernard Hogan-Howe said that the collection of communications data played a role in 95 percent of serious organized crime operations.

The measure remains a draft bill, which means it's subject to change before it is presented to Parliament.

In a nod to controversy surrounding the bill, the government has taken the unusual step of submitting it for comment to two parallel legislative bodies: A joint legislative committee composed of members of Britain's House of Lords and the House of Commons as well as Parliament's intelligence committee.

In a statement to fellow lawmakers, May struck a measured tone, saying she recognized "that these proposals raise important issues around personal privacy" but that the law would be balanced.

She was less measured in The Sun, where she dismissed worries that the bill would stomp on free expression as "ridiculous claims" dreamed up by "conspiracy theorists."

"Without changing the law the only freedom we would protect is that of criminals, terrorists and pedophiles," she said.

Britain Unveils Electronic Mass Surveillance Plan

meanwhile, in a nearby alley….

Government plans to extend secret hearings into civil courts are flawed and unfair, an influential House of Lords committee has warned.

In a strongly worded critique of the justice and security bill before its second reading in parliament next Tuesday, the constitution committee claims the proposals will undermine the UK's long-established principle of open justice.

Ken Clarke, the justice secretary, has defended the bill as a necessary method of exploiting intelligence material in court cases while protecting it from general disclosure. Civil rights groups, including Liberty, Amnesty and Reprieve, fear it throws a "cloak of secrecy" over wrongdoing such as rendition, torture and illegal detention.

The unexpected intervention of the constitution committee, chaired by Lady Jay, is intended to bolster opposition to the bill. It has been introduced into the Lords first rather than the House of Commons.

Earlier this week the majority of special advocates, security-cleared barristers who appear in sensitive cases, condemned so-called closed material procedures (CMPs) where a defendant or clamant is not permitted to see all the evidence.

They declared: "CMPs are inherently unfair and contrary to the common law tradition … The government would have to show the most compelling reasons to justify their introduction. No such reasons have been advanced and … in our view, none exists."

The report by the Lords constitution committee echoes their misgivings. "This is a constitutionally significant reform, challenging two principles of the rule of law: open justice and natural justice," the peers say.

The proposals contain "three basic flaws". One of them is that it is "constitutionally inappropriate for the executive" to have the dual role of being a party to the litigation and at the same time giving the government significant control over how proceedings are conducted.

Allowing the secretary of state to decide whether national security information should be excluded by a public interest immunity certificate or semi-disclosed under a CMP is inherently unfair, the committee's members state. It should be up to a court to decide which of the alternatives should be pursued.

"There are no grounds for believing that the courts are unable to strike an appropriate balance between the competing public interests of national security and the proper administration of justice," the peers add.

"The court should be required, for example, to consider whether the material could be disclosed to parties' legal representatives in confidence and whether the material could be disclosed in redacted form."

The constitution committee report welcomes the fact that a judge, rather than the secretary of state, would be able to make the final decision on whether or not there should be a closed hearing.

The justice and security bill's second reading on Tuesday is expected to run into severe opposition from senior lawyers in the Lords. Defending it last month, Clarke said: "Only civil cases involving national security evidence will be affected.

"This means that civil claims of mistreatment or complicity in torture brought against British agents which cannot currently be heard in our courts can in future be heard.

"It will stop the taxpayer being forced to pay out compensation even where a case has no merit, and will ensure that the public receives an independent judgment either way on serious allegations which have been laid against the government."

Security co-operation with Britain's allies, such as the US, would be threatened if shared intelligence material was exposed through court cases, the government has argued.

Plans For Secret Hearings In Civil Courts Attacked By Lords Committee