FIPR amendment on "comms data"

[Roland Perry]

In article <008901bfcd8a$b4364660$0d5b063e@default>, Tom Thomson
<cmt@btinternet.com> writes
>Some relays use the "Received:" headers for loop detectiion; some use
>them for loop avoidance; 

And some mail relays look at the Subject; for example to see if it
contains the word "Urgent", and possibly sender a pager alert.

We must actually be careful these relays aren't illegally intercepting -
although there is probably implied consent from at least the recipient.

>there were proposals (probably never
>implemented, since any relay that implemented loop-detection using
>them would wreck such a scheme) to use them for backtracking in
>adaptive mail routing over networks subject to frequent breaks. That
>seems to make these headers "communications data" rather than
>"content" because such uses are clearly for the communications
>system. Anothe thing that suggests they are not content is that they
>are added by intermediate relays - surely something other than what
>the originator of the email supplies is not content?

I think they might be additional content, added as the message passes
along. Although the penultimate one that got it to the relay at which
the intercept takes place is probably comms data. To make them all comms
data, maybe we need a "has or has had" amendment to the part that talks
about the data having a role in routing the communication.
-- 
Roland Perry