Roland Perry - "is an ISP a 'Person'?"

[Charles Lindsey]

	On Tue, 1 Oct 2002 16:41:56 +0100
	Roland Perry <roland@linx.net> said...

> 
> In message <036701c26959$4c144d80$c71121c2@sharpuk.co.uk>, David Howe
> <DaveHowe@gmx.co.uk> writes
> >if you assume that, in order for interception to
> >take place some individual must "see" it - then the machine doing the
> >seeing must be part of the "being" represented by the body corporate. As
> >a side effect, then the selective interception warrants issued under RIP
> >can't exist - by definition, you must be inspecting each mail to
> >distinguish covered from uncovered mail, and if the inspection mechanism
> >is not excluded from the definition, you are blanket-intercepting
> >everything, then discarding what you don't want.
> 
> This has occurred to me too. An ISP with any kind of Intercept
> Capability (of the RIPA s12 kind) is Intercepting everyone's emails :-(
> 
> Even without a formal Permanent Intercept Capability, the fact that you
> can (usually) access emails as Root, means the same.

Yes, the more you look into the proposition that filtering for spam is
interception, the more ridiculous consequences you run into.

So suppose that the Secretary of State has signed a warrant for the
interception of emails addressed to Joe Bloggs and served it on ISP X.

Now X finds just happens to have a point in its network such that all
the mails pass by that point in a stream. So the most convenient way to
apply the warrant is to insert a filter at that point. All the emails
with "To: Joe Bloggs" are diverted to the left, and all the rest are
diverted to the right. Or something. The ones diverted to the left are
sent to the black box, or whatever, and are also fed back into the main
stream so that Joe Bloggs does not notice their absence.

Now, according to the interpretations that Peter Fairbrother is trying
to impose on us, you have just intercepted ALL the mail passing through
ISP X.

Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------
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