Data Retention Regulations in the Lords

[James Firth]

On 26 Mar 2009 at 18:07, Richard Clayton wrote:
> IMP, IMP, IMP and more IMP quotes

The simplest argument I can find against spending any significant money in
this area at this moment it that the spending will be wasted entering an
arms race that the government can't, by insisting on broad-brush measures,
win due to the pace and agility that the foe can move forward compared to
the inertia of government legislation and technology roll-outs on a massive
scale in co-operation with independent telcos.

It's already acknowledged that IMP will do little for offshore web-based
communications systems that use SSL, except to identify the precise date and
time that TCP-sessions were established with the offshore server from within
the UK.

I can think of numerous countermeasures against this (proxy-routing, decoy
traffic etc), and I don't for a minute believe that terrorist organisations
or seriously organised criminals will not employ rather quickly.

The intercept capability will quickly become useless against all but petty
criminals and yet be open to abuse by the government if it so chose to abuse
the data.

James Firth