sorry, but ...

[Roland Perry]

In article <50185620.5000307 at zen.co.uk>, Peter Fairbrother 
<zenadsl6186 at zen.co.uk> writes
>>RIPA 1(1) says: "... at any place in the United Kingdom, any
>> communication in the course of its transmission..."
>>
>> Which is one of several references to "course of its transmission"
>> indicating that this is a continuous (flowing) process.
>
>Err, while I do not think you can intercept at each and every switch in 
>the network, I have to disagree a little on point - there is little I 
>can see in RIPA which implies or involves flowing, except between two 
>places.

Where do communications flow, if not between two places. Or are you 
becoming more alert to the one-to-many issue?

>A switch is a place - intercepting the wires between switches is not 
>the same as intercepting at a switch after the switch has received the 
>message and before it sends it on again.

Switches aren't generally store and forward, they deal in flows.

>What RIPA does talk about is the sender and the intended recipient of a 
>communication, and more, that those are the relevant places - and I 
>take that to mean at the level of eg the person who sends an email, and 
>the person who it is meant for, rather than eg the network or physical 
>or even application layers.

If I send an email to ukcrypto at chiark.greenend.org.uk who is the 
intended recipient? Surely not just you.

>>> And clearing up the stored comms NTL vs Ipswich question would be good
>>> too - the Police need a warrant from the HS to intercept telephone
>>> calls, but not to intercept email? Where's the sense in that?
>>
>> I continue to think that the decision in NTL was flawed. Remember that
>> it wasn't about intercepting emails as such, but revolved around a
>> provision enabling a "preservation order" [my words] for evidence that
>> was likely to be destroyed before that evidence could be obtained with a
>> production order.
>
>That was the immediate issue, perhaps, though imo focussing on it is a 
>bit of a red herring - the wider issue was whether the Police could in 
>effect intercept communications in transit in a public telecoms system 
>if they were emails, because they were stored in transit, but they 
>couldn't intercept such comms if they were not stored eg telephone calls.
>
>And that was why the decision was wrong imo, apart from being arbitrary 
>and making-up-law-on-the-fly-ish - the general protection against 
>interception of communications without a warrant signed by a Minister 
>was lost for email; and there is nothing I can find in PACE which 
>directly allowed the Police to demand stored emails from CSPs.

They can request production orders, which can demand stored emails.

>[1] I guess that a message left in Facebook is a stored communication.

Yes, very likely.

> If the Police etc have some power, perhaps under PACE a la NTL, to 
>obtain such stored messages without it contravening the 
>anti-interception provisions of RIPA,

Their production orders may not work if served on Facebook, wherever 
they are (not in the UK, I assume).

>could they just intercept all the Facebook traffic and filter out 
>everything which will not be a stored communication (ie Facebook 
>housekeeping traffic - oops that's mostly traffic data so they can get 
>that too) in order to obtain the stored comms under a PACE warrant?
>
>Can't see why not ...

No, you can't intercept everything just in case, and "sort it out 
later", that's the whole point.
-- 
Roland Perry