[ILUG] 1984 [Fwd: Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act]

[kevin lyda]

On Thu, Apr 26, 2001 at 07:27:54PM +0100, Gerard Gorman wrote:
> Well it should be clear that the reason that they mention these "normal
> tasks" is so that people don't kick up a fuss. Also I think this
> argument is in the same league as "what do you have to hide anyway?".

actually, no i don't think it is.  my point was that while we all feel
that privacy is important, many people here are admins.  for a long time
there weren't any laws governing what people did with computers, and
the few that existed related to copyright law.  over the past few years
privacy has become more of a concern.

in other words my point had more to do with people here not becoming the
next randall shwartz then the sheer stupidity of the nsa/gcse and all
their ilk.

> dealing with your point more directly, these laws were not called for by
> sys-admins, to make their lives more easy. It was brought about by

perhaps admins should pay more attention to these laws to make sure
they don't need a lawyer at hand as they do their job.  regardless of
whether admins take part in privacy legislation (lobbied for fascists
or the eff) the legislation will happen.  perhaps admins should make
sure their interests are addressed.

i'm not an admin, so this isn't an issue for me.  but for those that
are i'd suggest paying attention to what rules an awful lot of non-tech
people think you need.

> imprisonment)...interesting developments. Also, MI6 have put in a grant
> proposal to log *all* electronic traffic in the uk (yep...it costs a
> lot).

good.  help the high-tech economy, send oodles of encrypted data so
they have to try to decrypt it.  better yet send bursts of random data
from /dev/random just to keep them extra confused.  create random email
accounts that email encrypted data back and forth via cronjobs.

and if you really want to lobby for legislation then lobby for legislation
that will require the secret squirrels to publish exactly what amount
of storage/mips they hit when they finally give up, then place bets at
a local betting office.

kevin

oblinux: do any non-free os's have a /dev/random?  dealing with systems
that lack it is a fscking pain in the ass.

-- 
kevin at suberic.net          CERT CA-96.13/NiftyGreenShield: ... Impact:
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