Activities like these are unlikely to boost citizens’ confidence in the EU’s ability to deliver solutions to their demand for protection against serious crime and terrorism".[78] The hardware and software required to store all the retained data would be extremely costly. The costs of retaining data would not only fall on Internet Service Providers and telephone companies, but also on all companies and other organisations which would need to retain records of traffic passing through their switchboards and servers.[citation needed] Data retention gives excessive power to the state to monitor the lives of individual citizens.[citation needed] Data retention may be abused by the police to monitor the activities of any group which may come into conflict with the state; including ones which are engaged in legitimate protests. The UK police have used anti-terrorism powers against groups opposed to the war in Iraq[79] and protesters at an arms fair.[80] The definition of terrorism in the UK Terrorism Act 2000 includes not only action, but the threat of action, involving serious violence against a person, or serious damage to property, for the purposes of advancing a "political, religious or ideological cause".