M15 isn't interested in your e-mails - get over it.

Today civil rights campaigners are up in arms about new rules that compel internet service providers to keep details of all e-mails sent in the UK. The crux of their beef is that this is a severe infringement of our civil liberties.

Here’s what the Earl of Northesk, who sits on the Science and Technology committee at the House of Lords, had to say on the matter.

"This degree of storage is equivalent to having access to every second, every minute, every hour of your life. People have to worry about the scale, the virtuality of your life being exposed to round about 500 public authorities.

"Under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, privacy is a fundamental right... it is important to protect the principle of privacy because once you've lost it it's very difficult to recover."

Does he have a point? Is this obloquy justifed? Not for me. After all, what's actually being stored by ISPs is the time and date of e-communiques. The content, and ergo anything that might actually prove incriminating, remains private unless appropriate licences are obtained.

More importantly, it seems like real hubris on the part of the man in the street to assume that M15 would be at all interested in his life. I mean aren’t 99 per cent of e-mails concerned with the tedious details of our lives, such as what to have for tea tonight and when we’re meeting for a grown-up lemonade? Only fantasists who regard themselves as Alan Parker-style urban warriors and teenage anarchists could really find anything to object to in having their inane wibblings on file.

More importantly, the Home Office is claiming that the data will be helpful in combating crime. I for one am prepared to take their word for it. I know that M15 used e-mail to trace would-be Jihadists who were involved in the bombs at Glasgow Airport. If e-mail logs are going to keep us safer, I’m happy to have them monitored.