The Smith Report

[Caspar Bowden]

Should have checked before posting, but 

"72.-(1) In this Act-
..
'communication' includes-
..
(c) signals serving...for the actuation or control of any apparatus;"

QED ?
--
Caspar Bowden               Tel: +44(0)20 7354 2333
Director, Foundation for Information Policy Research
RIP Information Centre at:    www.fipr.org/rip#media



> So this "APART" loophole seems to give a cart-blanche to look 
> inside the data part of a packet (because it is OTHER DATA
> COMPRISED in a communication BY MEANS OF WHICH IT MAY BE 
> TRANSMITTED) - that gives an arbitrary license
> to work your way up through the protocol levels. An http 
> request string (with embedded parameters) undoubtedly fulfills
> the definition. It is "other data", and without it the 
> "communication" MAY NOT be "transmitted". The trick is to
> consider the transmission that "may" occur once the request
> string hits the Web server. You also have to construe 
> "communication" not as a message, but as a "request to transmit
> a web page". But that seems within a perfectly fair and ordinary
> meaning of the words, given the surrounding environment of 
> linguistic barbarity.
> 
> That seems to me to knock on the head any idea that comms 
> data is limited to IP numbers.