Silicon.com: Snooping Bill drives first ISP abroad

[Yaman Akdeniz]

On 10 Jul 2000, at 12:44, Richard Clayton wrote:

> However the S5 powers (interception with a warrant) purport to apply to
> any telecommunication system no matter where it might be. That said, I
> believe that serving a warrant in foreign lands may be ineffective... and
> serving it on customer service staff in the UK may be ineffective because
> they are unable to actually do the interception.

As you would recall, there seemed to be a "loophole" under the 
previous 1985 IOCA legislation that it did not for example applied to 
AOL type ISPs that may have operations elsewhere and the RIP intended 
to close that loophole from the government and law enforcement 
perspective. So I agree with your interpretationthat warrants 
"purport to apply to any telecommunication system no matter where it 
might be" but I think they can be effective as we are talking about 
the same ISP which runs a customer service in the UK. Of course they 
may wish not to co-operate with such a warrant but I think that 
remains to be seen and they will comply through their headquarters 
with such interception warrants. At least one scenario to be 
considered.

> Perhaps a lawyer could comment as to whether a warrant doesn't work
> abroad because of technical reasons (it is invalid) or practical reasons
> (the locals won't lock you up for ignoring it).

In my view, UK warrants have no effect outside the UK especially if 
the company who has been served such a warrant does not have a UK 
office or does not provide such services in the UK - e.g. my web 
hosting and mail server provider in Toronto, Canada who does not 
operate in the UK. But if I am under investigation and they serve 
warrants to various ISPs that I have an account, they may still be 
able to monitor my POP3 and SMTP activity through warrants served to 
UK ISPs that I use. Or is there a way to get around that as well - 
technically?

On the issue of warrants on foreign service producers, we should also 
remember that there are various  ongoing international discussions in 
relation to interception of communications (e.g. G8, COE, EU) and in 
the future we should not exclude the idea that such warrants may well 
be binding outside the UK.


Mr. Yaman Akdeniz,
Director, Cyber-Rights & Cyber-Liberties (UK)
Url: http://www.cyber-rights.org
E-mail: lawya@cyber-rights.org
Tel: +44 (0) 498 865116
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