What is a "communication" (was Re: sorry, but ...

[Ian Batten]

On 7 Aug 2012, at 16:39, "Charles Lindsey" <chl at clerew.man.ac.uk> wrote:

> On Wed, 01 Aug 2012 11:24:06 +0100, Caspar Bowden (travelling) <tharg at gmx.net> wrote:
> 
>>> How do we extend that theory to the situation where there are many receivers in many countries,
>> 
>> In ***theory***, it should be that if all the recipients are inside the UK, then it's internal, but if at least one intended recipient is outside UK, then its external, but...
> 
> I would have expected exactly the opposite.
> 
> If the message is from Alice (known to be in the UK, and easily shown to be such) via Facebook to Bob (who happens to be in the UK) and Others (outside the UK, and probably a bunch of villains) then if "they" intercept the message on its way to Facebook without warrant, they have intercepted a message from Alice to Bob, which is not allowed. End of story AFAICS.

That would depend on whether a point-to-multipoint message is deemed to be one message sent to a number of recipients, or a number of messages each sent to one message.  It clearly becomes multiple messages at the point of delivery (ie, it's sent to each recipient for final viewing via disjoint HTTP/whatever connections).  The technical and the legal view of this may differ, but I would be astounded if the government, or a court, would accept the argument that international traffic falls under the aegis of national law simply because one recipient is in the country.

ian