Striking the Balance 2

[Ian G Batten]

On Wed, 30 Oct 2002, Watkin Simon wrote:

> I wanted to thank you for your comments on my summary of your concerns (both
> on list and off list).  I will put around a revised checklist on Friday.

Any time.

> I still want to run past you thoughts on the specific issue of RIPA Part I
> Chapter II, categories of data and the list of designated persons that saw
> little light of day in May/June (and without which some powders will be kept
> dry).

Sounds good.

By the way, I ran the two things which have had ``what would the man in
the street say?'' discussions past my wife and my in-laws.  My wife is a
determined non-geek (*) and my in-laws have a very dismissive, Torygraph
attitude to ``all that civil liberties rubbish''.  On the topic of ``Is
it OK to use evidence gathered in a terrorism probe to prosecute for tax
evasion'' they all, interestingly, said now, and articulated essentially
the line that the crime for which you are prosecuted would have to be
serious enough to have justified the original surveillance.  On the
topic of ``are web logs equivalent to phone traffic data'' the answer
was clearly ``No, they're more sensitive''.  Just a data point.

> I hope you are finding this a worthwhile exercise - and I hope you agree
> we're getting somewhere.  There has been a suggestion of a live meeting -
> and if there is interest in that we can take that forward, otherwise happy
> to continue on line.

I think a live meeting would be a good idea.  David Hansen and I could
travel down by train and then keep the other newgroup we meet in busy
for days with our experiences.

ian

(*) She dismissed email, the Internet and SMS as all having no future.
She now reads the email from her friends nightly, before downloading all
her mail from work.  She's unfortunately a determined Outlook user,
which when you consider she's had Richard Stallman as a house guest
seems a little poor.