Re: Lord Bassam's Doormat - was Re: Google Toolbar caught tracking users when 'disabled'

Nicholas Bohm wrote:
> Peter Fairbrother wrote:
>> Richard Clayton wrote:
>>
>>>   Lord Bassam of Brighton: I think that my explanation will make it
>>>     plain that we do not seek to create a problem here where really
>>>     there should not be a problem at all. We are confident that the Bill
>>>     as drafted has the effect of providing the exemption from the
>>>     interception offence where the communication is delivered to a wrong
>>>     address. The definition of "interception" is limited to interception
>>>     of a communication in the course of its transmission by certain
>>>     means. To take one example, a letter which has been delivered
>>>     through a letterbox and is lying on a doormat is no longer in the
>>>     course of its transmission -- it has, after all, arrived -- because
>>>     it is no longer being delivered by the public postal service into
>>>     whose care it was entrusted. 
>> And there you have Lord Bassam's doormat. A communication has arrived
>> at the doormat when it has passed outside the system which was used to
>> deliver it.
>>
>> It actually helps, in retrospect perhaps surprisingly, and makes a lot
>> of sense.
>>
>>
>> Regarding emails, we have the example that pager messages stored in a
>> pager are still regarded to be in transmission, whether read or not.
>>
>> This must surely extend to emails when they are still in the user's
>> email program's mail folder too. The folder. like the memory in a
>> pager, is also a part of the system by which they were transmitted.

Re: Confusion about phishing reporting

In article <LhzhOHCFWXZLFAcQ@...>, Richard Clayton 
<richard@...> writes
><http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/8488319.stm>
>
>     More than half the victims of e-crime do not report the incident to
>     police, a survey has found.
>
>     The North Wales Police Authority survey found 57% of e-crime
>     victims reported the incident only to their bank or credit card
>     provider.

Is this another instance of the widespread conflation of "e-crime" and 
"plastic card fraud"? There are many ways that people can suffer from 
e-crime that are not as a result of abuse of their plastic card 
credentials.

And sometimes, people are unaware of the exact nature of what happened 
to them; so encouraging them to jump to the conclusion that it's the 
banks problem, and not involve the police, will inevitably result in 
under-reporting (and the inevitable under-resolution of whatever it was 
that happened to them).
--

-- 
Roland Perry

RE: Is your phone tapped? - 1957 Pathé newsreel

> bounces@...] On Behalf Of Richard Lamont
..
> It appears that concerns about improper use of interception go back a long
> way:
> 
>   http://www.britishpathe.com/record.php?id=33047

Great find - this is about the Marriman case described here 
http://www.fipr.org/rip/Birkett.htm (essential reading to understand UK policy history)

--
CB

Re: Home Office spawns new unit to expand internet surveillance

In article <4B63238E.3070904@...>, Peter Fairbrother 
<zenadsl6186@...> writes
>I note that Vivian Reding, the new European Commissioner for 
>Information Society and Media, seems to agree with me.

New Commissioner for Justice, fundamental rights and citizenship. Her 
old post at Information Society and Media has gone to Neelie Kroes.
--

-- 
Roland Perry

New RIPA Comms Data regulations

As this seems to be RIPA-week on the list, I thought I'd mention the 
following:

http://www.opsi.gov.uk/si/si2010/draft/ukdsi_9780111490341_en_1

notes:

http://www.opsi.gov.uk/si/si2010/draft/em/ukdsiem_9780111490341_en.pdf
--

-- 
Roland Perry

Re: Unpersons

On Fri, 29 Jan 2010 15:40:30 -0000, Nicholas Bohm <nbohm@...> wrote:

> Charles Lindsey wrote:

>> Eh? In the example I quoted, the Box IS the System.
>>
> You earlier wrote:
>
>> But if the messages being copied just to pass on their way are stored
>> for a short period in the box (a perfectly normal situation) then they
>> are already available to the (sufficiently determined) manager of the
>> box. Even if he writes no special software to access them, he can
>> always cause a hexadecimal dump of such messages in transit to be
>> printed out, using no more than facilities normally built into the box
>> for maintenance and diagnostic purposes. Then he can pore over the
>> printouts at his leisure    .
>>
>
> That seems to me to describe a box which which is added to a
> telecommunications system; otherwise where does it get the messages from?

No, but I wrote a more recent message than that, in which I pointed out  
that even if the box in question had no interception capabilities, and was  
just part of a bog-standard mail forwarding system, the sysadmin could  
still discover details of messages in transit using no more than the  
diagnostic and administrative tools normally provided with such a system.  
So if that means that it is already considered capable of interception,  
then there is no mailing system anywhere in the world that is not already  
so capable. It is, as we agree, necessary to draw a line in some ssensible  
place.

Re: Unpersons

Charles Lindsey wrote:
> On Fri, 29 Jan 2010 15:40:30 -0000, Nicholas Bohm <nbohm@...>
> wrote:
>
>> Charles Lindsey wrote:
>
>>> Eh? In the example I quoted, the Box IS the System.
>>>
>> You earlier wrote:
>>
>>> But if the messages being copied just to pass on their way are stored
>>> for a short period in the box (a perfectly normal situation) then they
>>> are already available to the (sufficiently determined) manager of the
>>> box. Even if he writes no special software to access them, he can
>>> always cause a hexadecimal dump of such messages in transit to be
>>> printed out, using no more than facilities normally built into the box
>>> for maintenance and diagnostic purposes. Then he can pore over the
>>> printouts at his leisure    .
>>>
>>
>> That seems to me to describe a box which which is added to a
>> telecommunications system; otherwise where does it get the messages
>> from?
>
> No, but I wrote a more recent message than that, in which I pointed
> out that even if the box in question had no interception capabilities,
> and was just part of a bog-standard mail forwarding system, the
> sysadmin could still discover details of messages in transit using no
> more than the diagnostic and administrative tools normally provided
> with such a system. So if that means that it is already considered

Re: Lord Bassam's Doormat - was Re: Google Toolbar caught tracking users when 'disabled'

On Sun, 31 Jan 2010 04:09:19 -0000, Peter Fairbrother  
<zenadsl6186@...> wrote:

> Richard Clayton wrote:
>
>>   Lord Bassam of Brighton: I think that my explanation will make it
>>     plain that we do not seek to create a problem here where really
>>     there should not be a problem at all. We are confident that the Bill
>>     as drafted has the effect of providing the exemption from the
>>     interception offence where the communication is delivered to a wrong
>>     address. The definition of "interception" is limited to interception
>>     of a communication in the course of its transmission by certain
>>     means. To take one example, a letter which has been delivered
>>     through a letterbox and is lying on a doormat is no longer in the
>>     course of its transmission -- it has, after all, arrived -- because
>>     it is no longer being delivered by the public postal service into
>>     whose care it was entrusted.
>
> And there you have Lord Bassam's doormat. A communication has arrived at  
> the doormat when it has passed outside the system which was used to  
> deliver it.
>
> It actually helps, in retrospect perhaps surprisingly, and makes a lot  
> of sense.

Bear in mind that Lord Bassam was addressing the question of when  
something was "in transmission". RIPA has a clear conception of a  
"recipient" (a person, in general). So the question I would ask is whether  
the message is "in the custody" of the recipient. If the recipient was  
Lord Bassam, then it is clearly in his custody once it has crossed his  

RE: Is your phone tapped? - 1957 Pathé newsreel

ukcrypto-bounces@... On Behalf Of Caspar Bowden
> Great find - this is about the Marriman case described here 
> http://www.fipr.org/rip/Birkett.htm (essential reading to understand > UK policy history)

The committee, and particularly Mr Walker, appear to have understood something which today is apparently
understood by no-one in government, by very few in the parliamentary labour party, and by very few civil
servants at the home office.

M. 

Virtual Revolution