sorry, but ...

[Peter Fairbrother]

First, I'd like to apologise again to Francis, whom I probably maligned. 
I got a bit hypoglycaemic, and didn't notice, and said something silly.


Second, I'd like to apologise to you all, because I said I'd analyse the 
draft bill and comment and so on and I did not do so in timely fashion. 
That was just lazyness and other-busynesses, and should not have happened.



Here's the but - suppose a black box is connected to a UK ISP's IP 
stream, and it's looking for traffic data in traffic that's to let's say 
the Facebook or Twitter or googlemail or WoW or Habbo sites.

These are afaik all hosted in the US, but they have strong UK connections.

Let's suppose both Alice and Bob are in the UK. Now suppose Alice sends 
Bob a message through facebook, or another US social media sites.



The black box sees and finds the traffic data concerned with Alice's 
message, quite lawfully under the new bill - and  the traffic data it 
sees tells it it's an , a message to a server outside the UK.

Now suppose a SoS has signed a blanket warrant to allow the 
black-box-operating-agency, hereinafter BlackBoxHQ, to intercept all 
external communications (which he can do with a single stroke of the pen 
under RIPA 8(4)).

BlackBoxHQ can see that Alice's message to Bob next door is in it's 
first step actually a message to a server in the US, and thus an 
external communication - and then BlackBoxHQ can look at Alice's 
message's _content_, not just it's traffic data.

This applies to all of Alice's messages sent through any non-UK website, 
like Facebook or Twitter or googlemail or WoW or Habbo or..


More, it will be very easy for them to look at this content, as they 
already have the raw IP stream to look at.




BTW there's also RIPA 4)1) for the truly sceptical ..


-- Peter F