one-to-many messaging

[Tom Thomson]

Sgriobh Peter Fairbrother:-
>
> Roland Perry wrote:
>
> > But it's so easy to persuade them it is. Assuming of course you can
get
> > the point over that port numbers identify which destination machine
is
> > required to service the request - after which it easily follows that
the
> > port number is part of the information required to deliver the
message
> > to the right server.
>
> But suppose that port numbers are _not_ needed to identify the actual
> machine, and all that is needed is the IP address - which will
> frequently, if not usually, be the case.
>
> Then the section 2(5) requirement, the "purposes of a
telecommunication
> system by means of which it is being or may be transmitted" is not met
-
> there is no such system, and any "perhaps it might be needed for this
> system system" is entirely imaginary.
>
> So in this typical case looking for port numbers _is_ interception
> (unless it's done for 2(5)(b) reasons - which does not include
Phorming,
> or conduct consisting of giving traffic data which has been gathered
> under 2(5)(b)).

I think Peter is conceding too much to Roland's extremely weak argument.

Even in cases where the port number does determine a machine, it is
extremely unusual for the provider of the public telecommunications
system to need to look at it - because the routing to different machines
is done outside the public telecommunications service, in the private
system at the endpoint - so the port number is not traffic data where
the public telecommunications system is concerned.

In the real world, almost always when a provider like BT routes a
communication it routes it to a DTE that is completely determined by the
IP address. The DTE may use the pot number to do some further routing,
but that is none of BT's business and doesn't make the port number into
traffic data, because BT knows nothing about the structure of the DTE.

Now if BT is providing an AT service supporting several DTEs on one
public IP address, the port number can come into play as traffic data so
far as that AT function is concerned, because that's one way AT is done.
But it's questionable then whether the AT is part of the public
telecommunications system or part of the subscriber's private system
that just happens to be managed for him by BT (he, not BT, will usually
own the apparatus that handles AT).  And most people do their AT in a
firewall managed by themselves and would let the public service provider
have any control at all over it.

M.