'Today' considers data retention and IMP

[John Wilson]

On Sun, Jan 11, 2009 at 11:10 AM, Roland Perry
<lists@internetpolicyagency.com> wrote:
> In article <a9f4d96f0901090650t57ba6d0tf1fd8ac85c0e1f0c@mail.gmail.com>,
> John Wilson <tugwilson@gmail.com> writes
>>
>> So, if I'm a bad person, I can stop the authorities collecting
>> information which allows them to build the relationship maps they love
>> so much and I can do so in a way which does not make me stand out from
>> the rest of the population.
>
>> Am I missing something here?
>
> That any surveillance/registration system can be worked around by
> sufficiently determined and sophisticated crooks, but they still get enough
> useful results.


Quite so.

The situation here, as I understand it, is that this aspect of the
surveillance system is "worked round" by every EU user who uses a non
EU based web-mail system and any future surveillance system will be
"worked round" by any EU user who turns SSL on in Gmail (it takes two
clicks and you'd be an idiot not to turn it on if you use the service
outside your home).

A sufficiently sophisticated surveillance system is able to detect
that it's being "worked round" and can use that information as part of
an evaluation of the likelihood that the user merits further
observation. However if the mechanism used is one that a large number
of normal users use then the bad people disappear into the crowd.

So the problem is not that bad people can evade the system it's that
they can do so and not raise suspicion.

John Wilson