Network management Toolkit

Story: Gov't: Comms database has to happen

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Place your bets folks

If you send an email from your UK ISP supplied email account to another UK ISP supplied email account, then your traffic will be logged under these new proposals; but then the traffic is already being logged today and the ISP can be forced to give it up to the "authorities" for the flimsiest of reasons. eg checking that your kid is enrolled in the right school.

If you use:

- An offshore https web based email account.
- An offshore conventional email server over an SSL connection.
- A UK based, self hosted email server with SSL.

Then any of these (and probably more examples I have yet to think of) will completely bypass these regulations and be utterly invisible to the snoopers.

If I were planning a criminal enterprise and wanted to chat about it with my co-conspirators, I would probably set up a self hosted email server and equip my fellows with netbooks, paltops or laptops using a mail client enabled for IMAPS & SMTPS and WiFi and configure them to use my new email server. When the jobs done, I would 7xcrypto-wipe the hard drive and sell the whole lot at a car boot sale.

Given that there are so many ways round these proposals, one of three scenarios applies. I encourage fellow correspondents to vote for the one they think applies here :-)

1) Jaqubootie Smith and her fellow travellers haven't even got the first clue about IT and genuinely think that the bad people are going fall for their dastardly ploy and march themselves into prison in lines two abreast.

2) They know about these work arounds and don't care because they're not actually worried about results, or how much it will all cost or indeed the gross, un-British invasion of individual privacy; they just want the "Tough on Crime" headlines in the hope "The Great Unwashed" will be impressed and vote for them.

3) They know about these work arounds and don't care because they actually want the data on us; the vast majority of law abiding subjects. This begs the question WHY they might want to pokey nose on us in this way, but none the less they do seem to get off on that sort of thing.

Me? I'm going with 2) .. plus a side order of 3) for texture and added interest.

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