Mastering the Internet

[Ian Batten]

On 4 May 2009, at 13:54, Richard Clayton wrote:
>
> viz: the capability envisaged is of reconstructing the streams of data
> which is flowing back and forth between users and "third parties" (ie:
> hotmail/gmail/facebook/bebo &c) and then extracting "traffic data"  
> from
> within those streams of data (and discarding the rest)

I thought we were all clear that that was the desire?  Perhaps I've  
been looking at this stuff for too long, but I actually read that  
requirement into what's in the consultation.

>
>
> They consider your login name for hotmail/gmail/facebook/bebo &c to be
> traffic data, along with details of who when and how much you are
> communicating with through these systems. They do not consider  
> whatever
> you say within these systems to be comms data but content.

Indeed.  As you say, they're essentially arguing that GoogleMail's use  
of HTTP and HTML and Javascript is equivalent to SMTP and IMAP.

ian