Is porn scanning interception?

[Nicholas Bohm]

At 17:34 17/07/2002 +0100, you wrote:
>On 16 Jul 2002 at 15:18, Graham wrote:
>
> > I maintain that the sorting room has intercepted my mail.  They might
> > have had a good reason for doing so, and it may even be legal, but
> > interception has taken place.
>
>I agree with you, but we are both wrong:-)
>
>English is used in a specialised way by many groups of people. They
>do this in order to suit their purposes. For example the odd language
>that things like RFCs and HTML standards are written in is hardly the
>sort of English that a general reader of the language would be able
>to make much sense of. Even I, who did my first computer programming
>in 1980, find the language convoluted and strange. Similarly all
>sorts of groups use English in a specialised way and it can be quite
>strange to see people trying to communicate between two versions of
>specialised English.
>
>"Outsiders" get the impression that this specialised English is
>designed to keep out outsiders, but in reality it is to be precise.
>The term "circuit protective conductor" sounds inpenetrable to people
>who don't understand electrical engineering, but it has a precise
>meaning. The term "low voltage" means just that to an electrical
>engineer, but to an "outsider" it probably means a voltage that is
>safe to touch. This is an example where a precise term could be
>dangerous to "outsiders" as the 750V conductor rails on some railway
>lines are an example of "low voltage".
>
>The legal world is another group of people who use a specialised form
>of English that may not make sense to an "outsider". I did once hear
>of a cyclist who was knocked off his bike by a motorist. The police
>had the nerve to tell him that it was not dangerous driving. To an
>"outsider" knocking a cyclist off their bikle is obviously dangerous
>driving (it is driving and it is dangerous), but in the legal world a
>different form of English is used.
>
>An example of how confusion can reign is the enquiry into a train
>that partly fell into a river after a bridge collapsed in floods in
>the 1980s. At one point the railway staff used the word obstruction.
>In railway English an obstruction is defined in the rule book. In
>legal English a barrister can speak for hours on what the word
>obstruction means. The result was a most unsatisfactory exchange that
>helped nobody.
>
>I have used examples from outside crypto to make illustrating my
>point clearer. However the same thing applies to crypto.

As a lawyer I agree with David's lucid exposition.  In many professions 
there are some who retreat behind the jargon as a protective barrier for 
preserving the mysteries; the best use the jargon where it improves 
communications, and are not afraid to use plain language where the case 
requires it.

In the case of RIP "interception", we have an example of lawyer's jargon 
which does not correspond with the all the meanings of the same word in 
ordinary English.  That's life:  the law takes the word to mean what the 
Act says, and that's it.

As to "makes available", these words have no special meaning, and common 
sense is required.  One aspect of common sense involves not interpreting 
the words to cover cases which they are most unlikely to have been intended 
for.

So the fact that the activities and procedures of ISPs would allow them to 
read their customers' mail if they chose cannot mean that they are all 
engaged in illegal interception.  It follows that if automated virus or 
porn scanning is carried out without human intervention being involved, and 
the scanning does not alter the degree to which the mail is available to a 
person other than the intended recipient, it is not "interception" as defined.

As others have pointed out, scanning may be carried out so as to involve 
human intervention.  That would involve interception (possibly lawful), and 
could have been what the IC was talking about.  It is not clear that she 
was taking a view about the lawfulness of automated scanning without human 
intervention.

Regards

Nicholas

Salkyns, Great Canfield,
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PGP RSA 1024 bit public key ID: 0x08340015.  Fingerprint:
9E 15 FB 2A 54 96 24 37  98 A2 E0 D1 34 13 48 07
PGP DSS/DH 1024/3072 public key ID: 0x899DD7FF.  Fingerprint:
5248 1320 B42E 84FC 1E8B  A9E6 0912 AE66 899D D7FF