Tuesday, February 17, 2009

More invasion of privacy

Another one that's been brewing comes into force in March - all ISP's will be obligated to keep a record of all emails sent for a year. Not the content mind just the sender, recipient and time, apparently it'll be useful for combating crime. Apparently no-one in government has Googled "anonymous email".

Yup once again a law comes into effect that only affects the law-abiding. Even if they made the use of such remailers illegal here's a little home truth; point one - criminals break the law [shock horror]; point two - criminals will use remailers on sites situated outside your jurisdiction so you can't even threaten the ISP; point three - you really are morons aren't you?

Once again it seems that the Government doesn't possess a single IT worker or at least one that they're prepared to listen to. This could have all been avoided by one example, so perhaps we can provide them with one instead.

Here's the deal - visit Anonymouse.org enter the email address as "public.enquiries@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk" (seeing as Brown's ain't working); enter the subject as "Law on ISP email records" and as text enter "Making ISPs keep email records? Yeah not as if you can do it anonymously - anonymouse.org". Now hit Send Anonymously. Notice that so you can't even link up an email sent with an IP address record the email is delayed by a random amount up to 12 hours. Oh and for anyone worried that the government will seize the site's records, they're based in the Seychelles.

Pathetic isn't it what our 'leaders' know or can be bothered to find out.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Publicity stunt.

Maybe these guys do know what their law is stupid and useless, but they're hoping the voting public will be too stupid to comprehend this?

I mean, it sounds great on paper to somebody who isn't very computer-aware. Maybe it creates the impression that the government is taking computer security seriously or something?

Alternatively, maybe these people truly are actually that stupid. I guess we'll never know…

FlipC said...

My two competing theories are as follows:

1) The government doesn't really grok the internet at all, that any laws they pass don't apply outside this country and that without 'doing a China' can't even be applied adequately inside this country.

2) They do understand this and that the only people they'll be able to watch are the normal law-abiding citizens of this country and the reason they're continuing is either a) They think it'll make them look good politically or b) They really do want to try to set up a police state.

I'd like to think of them as stupid over being totalitarian.