Here we go again - ISP DPI, but is it interception?

Charles Lindsey chl at clerew.man.ac.uk
Thu Jul 29 12:53:08 BST 2010


On Wed, 28 Jul 2010 18:40:17 +0100, Peter Fairbrother  
<zenadsl6186 at zen.co.uk> wrote:

> “telecommunications service” means any service that consists in the  
> provision of access to, and of facilities for making use of, any  
> telecommunication system (whether or not one provided by the person  
> providing the service); and
>
> “telecommunication system” means any system (including the apparatus  
> comprised in it) which exists (whether wholly or partly in the United  
> Kingdom or elsewhere) for the purpose of facilitating the transmission  
> of communications by any means involving the use of electrical or  
> electro-magnetic energy.
>
>
> Now I could go into detail about this, yet again, but I've done it  
> before - so I'll just say that I read that to mean they can only  
> intercept  for purposes connected to their ability to pass messages.

So the transmission of communications is not "facilitated" by filtering  
out the bogus ones?
>
> TalkTalk's actions do not fall under 3(3) because they do not facilitate  
> the transmission of communications. If it didn't happen then people  
> would still be able to get web service as normal.
>
> Email spam and virus filtering arguably does fall under 3(3), because if  
> it didn't happen then email would be unuseable.

Exactly. But are you now arguing that it is perhaps legal to filter email,  
but it is not legal to filter web sites that purvey malware? Or to perform  
actions that might "facilitate" such filtering?

-- 
Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------
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