Data retention question

[Roland Perry]

In article <53CBE282.2060005 at cobb.uk.net>, Graham Cobb 
<g+ukcrypto at cobb.uk.net> writes
>Where I do see point, is in educating MPs on "softer" topics -- more
>political and policy related.  For example, the importance of human
>rights: including how the right to privacy is critical to other rights
>they are more aware of and already care more about, such as free
>expression, health, family life, safety, business, etc.

I agree quite strongly. To take one example, unsolicited email (which is 
a privacy, business and safety issue - assuming one don't also subscribe 
to the view that spam should be allowed as a form of self-expression).

MPs in Westminster (of all parties) in the run-up to the 2001 election 
couldn't initially see anything wrong in using email addresses their 
party machines had acquired, in order to spam them with political 
'marketing'. (The Data Protection Registrar having agreed that such 
emails would indeed count as marketing). I had to go to a meeting 
arranged by the all-party IT group to explain to them why this was wrong 
(from the point of view of UK-based ISPs acting on behalf of their long 
suffering customers).

Fast-forward to Europe a year later, when it was necessary to engage in 
an education campaign for Euro-MPs to vote against proposals to make 
email spamming legal unless someone complained on a case-by-case basis 
to the sender (aka opted-out). The MP's excuse was that the systems they 
were familiar with filtered spam into a folder that they could ignore, 
so didn't understand why it was an issue for the public to be deluged 
with spam because it was so easy to ignore.
-- 
Roland Perry