[ILUG] legality of snooping

[Justin Mason]

Sascha Lucky Luck said:

> Thus spoke John P. Looney:
> >  There is an article about UK's proposed "RIP" bill:
> >     http://www.stand.org.uk/commentary.php3
> >  Down the end is:
> >  "Meanwhile, the Irish government is legislating to make it illegal even
> > for it to snoop on Internet traffic, so if this Bill makes it to the
> > Statute book we can all move to Irish ISPs. 
> 
> Hm. I wonder what that means for an Irish ISP that runs POPs in NI...

I thought this came up last week on the IIU list? or was it on ILUG?  It
was definitely in NTKnow for sure.

Anyway, the upshot from NTK is:

	 St Patrick's Day, and a fitting time to answer a few mails
	 we've had regarding the RIP Bill. Given, say our
	 correspondents, the new insecurities installed into ISPs by
	 the Bill would a solution be to log onto Irish ISPs, given
	 their government's more enlightened approach to preserving
	 privacy? Well, sadly no: thanks to a separate section of the
	 same bill, the Home Secretary has the right to request mass
	 monitoring of any "external communications", which is to
	 say, any packet passing over UK borders. So, unless you have
	 encryption on the phone line itself, this would actually
	 make it *easier* to loosen your own security. However, we
	 should point out that RIP might well be the perfect moment
	 for Dutch or Irish entrepreneurs to introduce a Freedom
	 server - which *does* provide point-to-point encryption - in
	 their own country, and then charge a modest fee for UK
	 users. Given that this is an area which, by RIP law, is now
	 a proscribed practice in this country, feel free to take
	 over this market. Emphasis on the word "free", there.
	 http://www.freedom.net/
	 - there we go, affecting the "economic well-being of the UK" again
	 http://www.statewatch.org/secreteurope.html
	  - on the other hand, we're all Europeans now, unfortunately
	 http://www.online.ie/technology/technoculture/index.adp?id=5916 
	       - last bastion of free speech. And weird HTMLification.

--j.