Data retention question

[Ian Mason]

On 15 Jul 2014, at 04:41, Peter Fairbrother wrote:

> I have no idea of the answers to your questions, but I'd like to point out that eg an email poll is a communication, of sorts at least - the device and the email server send each other information.

I'd argue for a poll being part of the *protocol*, not a *communication* per se. By analogy with the physical postal service, it's a bit like Bert shouting to George across the post-room "Anything to go to Farmer Giles today?". Bert's uttering may, in the strictest sense, be communication but as part of the Post Office's job of transmitting communications between users it's mere internal protocol. 

If one was to rely on this as *communication* then, coming back to the world of electronic communications, ARP packets would count as *communication* and suddenly every LAN in the country would suddenly come with a data retention requirement.