LONDON - Britain's top law-enforcement official says that the government is considering setting up a database of all phone and e-mail traffic in the country as part of a high-tech strategy to fight terrorism and crime.

Opposition politicians and civil liberties groups condemned the idea. The country's terror-law ombudsman said the government must be prevented from setting up a vast "data warehouse."

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said the police and security services needed new ways to collect and store records of phone calls, e-mails and Internet traffic.

She said technological changes had created a "complex and fragmented" online world and meant information such as telephone billing data was not always retained. She said new measures would try to find "some way or other to collect that data and store it."

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