Government black boxes will 'collect every email'

[Roland Perry]

In article <20081110224653.77681df1@peterson.fenrir.org.uk>, Brian 
Morrison <bdm@fenrir.org.uk> writes
>> So you don't think that filling in a seven page form to use a pair of
>> binoculars is "adequately difficult"?
>
>I think that's a rather trivial example to be honest. I'm far more
>worried about the ability to trawl through just about anything that is
>desired on the say so of a "senior" officer who isn't too well informed
>about the situation. I'd much prefer that a judge has to be got out of
>bed if it's that important.

You are conflating different things here. "Trawling" is a specific form 
of investigation which isn't allowed - obtaining lots of data just to 
look through it to see if there's anything interesting. And it's not a 
particularly useful technique when applied to telecoms subscriber data.

As for getting judges out of bed to sign a warrant to obtain someone's 
address from their car registration so you can send them a parking 
ticket... there is a continuum of offences and remedies, and mindful 
that we were talking about reverse-DQ enquiries, law enforcement efforts 
will only scale at all if there's a realistic regime in place for those.
-- 
Roland Perry