Is virus scanning interception?

[Nicholas Bohm]

At 23:36 12/07/2002 +0100, Peter Fairbrother wrote:
>  Nicholas Bohm wrote:
> >
> > I am a lawyer, and this seems to me exactly right.
> >
> > "Person" includes a company or other body corporate, but not a machine.
>
>What if the machine acts for a person or body corporate? In a more general
>sense, how about my telephone answering machine? It takes calls, and as far
>as I am concerned it acts for me. Is it not acting for and thus part of my
>"person"? If I put a slanderous message on it, can I not be sued? Or on my
>website? Then there's that bomb I mentioned earlier...
>
>If I have a lethal burglar deterrent, don't I get sent to jail even though
>no-one has been killed yet?
>
>
>IMHO anything that examines content should be considered interception, be it
>a machine acting for a body corporate, or a live human.

The question is whether incoming mail is made available, while being 
transmitted, to a person other than the sender or intended recipient.  This 
depends on what the machine is set up to do.  If it enables someone other 
than the intended recipient to read the mail, it is interception.  If it 
destroys it, then there is no interception as defined by the statute.

Regards

Nicholas

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