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

[David Howe]

at Thursday, October 03, 2002 12:33 PM, James Hammerton
<james@tardis.ed.ac.uk> was seen to say:
> Let's suppose we interpret the Act this way. If the automated
> process deletes all emails critical of the government and all emails
> that are encrypted via PGP then you're saying it is not interception.
Yep. if you define interception as interfering (in some way) with a
system as to make mail available to a person not included in the
recipients list, then deleting *anything* isnt' interception.
For that matter, I can't see what such filtering is other than probably
customer-losing. It could be breach of contract, as implicitly the ISP
has a contractual duty to make best-effort to pass on any or all mail
for you - but as has been said already, some isps offer filtering (for
porn) as a value-added service.

Filtering for political compliance is a lot of things - immoral, dubious
and probably in breach of contract - but it isn't interception.
Blocking someone's dialup access to overseas NNTP servers until they
agree not to insult Mr Godfrey again isn't interception either - it is
filtering.

> I realise this is a point about how we'd want (or more accurately not
> want) RIPA to work rather than how it will be interpreted, but it
> suggests to me there is some sense in Peter Fairbrother's
> interpretation of it.
To be honest, I don't see it - you want Peter to be right so that you
can count filtering as interception?