BAD NEWS :( Government amendments reinforce Big Browser

[Quentin Campbell]

On Wed, 7 Jun 2000, Caspar Bowden wrote:

[snip]
> The amendement to S.2 below seems absolutely to clarify that comms data
> INCLUDES signals for the actuation of apparatus, i.e the full http string,
> and therefore that conduct in relation to it DOES NOT constitute
> interception - therefore no warrant is required.

Caspar et al

In clarifying what is meant by "communications" data the ammendment makes
even less certain what can be strictly classed as "content". My special
interest is electronic mail and in this context I make the following
observations.

It would appear that this ammendment could have the side effect of making
the "content" of an e-mail message (that is the body and any attachments)
into "communications data".

This possibility arises because message "content" can signal to an
anti-virus checker, or some other mail filter apparatus, which can act on
this content to reject the message with an error reply or in some other
way respond to the content of the message in much the same way that a web
server responds to the "content" of an http request.

An example of the latter is a message carrying the "ILOVEYOU" worm (the
content of the message is a Visual Basic Script attachment) which signals
to the receiving software (limited at present to various Microsoft
mailers) to generate a whole series of new messages that replicate the
worm and pass them on to new recipients whose addresses were gleaned from
files stored on the original recipient host.

Quentin
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