Silicon.com Leader: Privazzzzzy? Pay attention, your wallet's at risk

[Caspar Bowden]

>[mailto:ukcrypto-admin@chiark.greenend.org.uk]On Behalf Of Roland Perry
...
>As usual, an inability to distinguish between "Comms data for 7 years"
>[1] and "Content for 7 years", makes it hard to place the rest of the
>article in a sensible context.

Agreed - it could be clearer. Have obtained a correction from VNU's story
(http://www.vnunet.com/News/1121747) - previous version also badly confused
content and traffic data. What seems to happen is the journos lack lingo to
express potential intrusiveness of Net traffic analyis, so they just mix it
up with content for the hell of it. BBC Online and R4 Today, Observer, and
just about every online news site has done this at one time or other - only
thing to do seems to be point out and ask for correction - as FIPR regularly
does.

But the main point is that if one reads -
http://www.statewatch.org/soseurope.htm
...then it's very hard to square with below, unless civil servants have
exceeded their authority, or there has been amazingly cynical wordsmithing
and probable deceit...

e-Minister Patricia Hewitt was asked in a Guardian online Q&A session only
last Friday:
http://politicstalk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?128@112.hdYgcfAY4Xe^0@.ee82d04
"The police (NCIS and ACPO) are still pressing for a new law to compel ISPs
to log the addresses of all e-mails sent and received, websites browsed,
newsgroups perused, for ALL their customers indiscriminately, for up to 7
years (or 3 or 5 depending on the audience). Will Labour enact such a law in
its next term?"
...to which she gave the unqualified single-word answer "No."

Ms. Hewitt and Charles Clarke letter to the Sunday Independent on 28th Jan
2001 (no URL - not online):
"YOU ASSERT that the Government plans to 'force companies to retain e-mail
records' through the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (Ripa) ('Demon
sees devil in the detail of RIP Act,' 21 January).  We do not. Ripa contains
no such powers. There is an important difference between providing for
lawful powers to access communications data and legislating to require
internet service providers to retain such information for law-enforcement
purposes. Ripa is only about the former. It introduces comprehensive
statutory controls, for the first time, governing access to billing
information or subscriber details. We have no plans to introduce legislation
mandating the retention of such data."

Ms.Hewitt also rejected these proposals in her evidence to the Trade &
Industry Select Ctee - see http://www.fipr.org/rip/#E-poohpooh
--
Caspar Bowden               Tel: +44(0)20 7354 2333
Director, Foundation for Information Policy Research
RIP Information Centre at:    www.fipr.org/rip#media