What is Communications Data?

[Ken Brown]

Graham Murray wrote:

> I suppose that it would not be possible to have a very simple, and
> technology neutral, definition such as "Traffic data is the
> information actually used (by the system(s) involved) to route the
> specific message from the sender to the recipient." For postal mail
> this would be the house number or name, possibly the road, postal town
> and postcode as written on the envelope.

And in the example of opening the paper envelope to look for a return
address?

Or the buttons pressed on a phone in response to the instruction "press
1 for general enquiries, or 2 to talk to a counsellor"

In email (which we have all been talking about presumably because we
know how it works better than "They" do, though it is by far the only
kind of communication involved) it is becoming common for people to set
up rules that store incoming mail in different folders depending on the
headers, or even the text.  It is perfectly possible to write rules that
scan text for key words and forward to other mail recipients if they are
found. I'd think most list members have at least tried that in "out of
office" situations ("if the body contains the word
"company_I_applied_for_job_at" forward to
onabeachingreece_93@hotmail.com")