Seriously thoughtful UK launches massive, one-year program to archive every email

[dreams]

I'm off to work and just saw this....

short version here.. http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/null/136610


UK launches massive, one-year program to archive every email

Mon Apr 6, 2009 4:51PM EDT

In a move that even the most nonchalant of privacy advocates is crying foul over, the UK has put into effect a European Union directive which mandates the archival of information regarding virtually all internet traffic for the next 12 months. The program formally went into effect Monday.

The data retention rules require the archival of all email traffic (the identities of the sender and receiver, but not the contents of the messages), records of VOIP telephone calls (traditional phone calls are already monitored), and information about every website visited by any computer user in the country. The rules are being pushed down "across the board to even the smallest company," as every ISP large or small will be required to collect and store the data. That data will then be accessible -- to fight "crime and terrorism," of course -- by "hundreds of public bodies" to investigate whatever crimes they see fit.

Technically the new directive applies to all countries of the EU, but individual nations appear to be complying with the rules to various degrees. Privacy-obsessed Sweden is reportedly ignoring the rule completely, for example.

The privacy implications of the rule are enormous, as everything UK citizens do online will now be under the watchful eye of EU's powerful Home Office. One privacy advocate, whose anger is clearly barely being held back, called it "the kind of technology that the Stasi would have dreamed of." Naturally, the government counters that this kind of information has already proven invaluable in tracking down criminals, including the killer of an 11-year-old boy a couple of years ago.

Privacy concerns aside, another issue becomes one of how exactly to manage all this data. A report dating back to 2004 estimated that a single, large ISP in the UK would need up to 40 million gigabytes of storage capacity to store the traffic data from a year of user activity. Even in 2009, that kind of storage doesn't come cheap, nor does the challenge of managing it all come easy."

longer version here.... http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sciencean...or-a-year.html

[Xenophon]

Time for our UK friends and their correspondents to get familiar with PGP (or other email encryption technologies). It's your civic duty to increase the amount of encrypted traffic on the net! (only half joking, btw)

Xenophon

[zelda_pinwheel]

Originally Posted by Xenophon

Time for our UK friends and their correspondents to get familiar with PGP (or other email encryption technologies). It's your civic duty to increase the amount of encrypted traffic on the net! (only half joking, btw)

Xenophon

that's what i'm thinking.

[Moejoe]

Damn, blast and other words that probably haven't been invented yet

[gwynevans]

Originally Posted by Xenophon

Time for our UK friends and their correspondents to get familiar with PGP (or other email encryption technologies). It's your civic duty to increase the amount of encrypted traffic on the net! (only half joking, btw)

Xenophon

The downsides being that (a) the (Labour) Government have agreed to fund the ISPs costs involved in archiving this information and (b) it's almost certainly a criminal offense to refuse to hand over the private keys if asked or to tell anyone about having done so. (Not joking at all...)

[Krystian Galaj]

Originally Posted by dreams

The data retention rules require the archival of all email traffic (the identities of the sender and receiver, but not the contents of the messages) [...]

Originally Posted by Xenophon

Time for our UK friends and their correspondents to get familiar with PGP (or other email encryption technologies). It's your civic duty to increase the amount of encrypted traffic on the net! (only half joking, btw)

What would that help, if they only store the sender and recipient?

[Greg Anos]

This dastarly act just triggered of my warped humor again. Here is protest song set to Climb Ev'ry Mountain from the Sound Of Money...oops I mean Music...


(As if the scansion's weak, you do a parody in less than two hours while fixing a meal at the same time....)

Here goes...(break out your airsick bag.)


Scan ev'ry e-mail,
Track er'vy site,
Capture ev'ry download,
As they watch you dream.

Scan ev'ry e-mail,
Track er'vy site,
Capture er'vy download,
As they track and scheme!

A scheme that will track all the friends
that you knooow.
A scheme that will track all the sites
where you venture to go.

Scan ev'ry e-mail,
Track er'vy site,
Capture er'vy download,
Even thought it's not right.

Scan ev'ry e-mail,
Track er'vy site,
Capture er'vy download,
They don't expect a fight!

A scheme that will take all the storage
the world can give.
A scheme that will track all your life
for as long as you live....

Scan ev'ry e-mail,
Track er'vy site,
Capture er'vy download,
As they work their schemes!

[Xenophon]

Originally Posted by gwynevans

The downsides being that (a) the (Labour) Government have agreed to fund the ISPs costs involved in archiving this information and (b) it's almost certainly a criminal offense to refuse to hand over the private keys if asked or to tell anyone about having done so. (Not joking at all...)

What private keys? I routinely send emails full of random characters to my friends and relatives. Just ask them! In fact, my faculty will be happy to tell you that they've seen me typing random characters into my computer far too often.

But you'd better be prepared to keep a really good straight face. And probably spend time in jail for contempt of court.

I really love the 5th amendment!

Xenophon

[Xenophon]

Originally Posted by Krystian Galaj

What would that help, if they only store the sender and recipient?

I missed the "only store sender and recipient." But traffic analysis is bad enough! Time to fight back!

Everybody ready? After me:

Spam, spam, spam, spam
Spam, spam, spam, spam
...


More seriously, the only counters to traffic analysis that I am aware of involve either disguising the real message and hiding it amongst an avalanche of garbage or using a broadcast technique to avoid disclosing the identity of the recipient. And both of these counters have their own problems.

If you really care, read some good books on crypto and on security (in the broad sense rather than just "computer security."

I suggest that it's time for our UK brethren to "really care."

Xenophon

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by zelda_pinwheel

that's what i'm thinking.

You've slightly lost me. How does PGP encryption affect the logging of the fact that "person A has sent an e-mail to person B"? The contents of the e-mail are not being stored.

Traffic analysis is an important tool in tracking down the connections between criminals, terrorists ,etc. That is the reason for this. The data will ONLY be available to law-enforcement officials with a court order. I have no problem with this myself. What is your issue with it?

[mpd123]

hi all
couldnt the eu make better use of this technology by tracking down people who use the internet for cybercrime (creditcard fraud etc) rather than spending a fortune recording email and browsing habits of the public.
or use it to stop all the spam and viruses from infecting the web.

or get rid of all the porn (but what would jackie smiths husband do then???)

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by mpd123

hi all
couldnt the eu make better use of this technology by tracking down people who use the internet for cybercrime (creditcard fraud etc) rather than spending a fortune recording email and browsing habits of the public.
or use it to stop all the spam and viruses from infecting the web.

The purpose of this IS to track down people who use the Internet to commit serious crimes, and do you really think that storing mail server logs is going to cost a "fortune"? I really don't see why it should do.

[mpd123]

hi harry

"A report dating back to 2004 estimated that a single, large ISP in the UK would need up to 40 million gigabytes of storage capacity to store the traffic data from a year of user activity. Even in 2009, that kind of storage doesn't come cheap, nor does the challenge of managing it all come easy."

where are they going to store all this?

and another thing to think about is how secure will it be given the goverments recent track record with the loss of data?

also can you really trust them not to twist this law so it can be used to look at everything you do online in the future by railroading it through under the guise of anti terror laws?

[mpd123]

the qoute is from dreams btw i cant get it to work properly.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by mpd123

hi harry

"A report dating back to 2004 estimated that a single, large ISP in the UK would need up to 40 million gigabytes of storage capacity to store the traffic data from a year of user activity. Even in 2009, that kind of storage doesn't come cheap, nor does the challenge of managing it all come easy."

where are they going to store all this?

But they are not (as I understand it) going to store "all user activity"; just e-mail and URLs visited. That's a much more "manageable" problem. The company I work for (several tens of thousands of employees - the size of a small ISP) logs all its e-mail traffic and web usage; the database is not large.

also can you really trust them not to twist this law so it can be used to look at everything you do online in the future by railroading it through under the guise of anti terror laws?

I'm afraid I don't share your cynicism of the aims of government. Like it or not, surveillance techniques are vital for law enforcement: eg the arrest of the chaps who attempted to bomb the London Underground a couple of years ago was almost entirely down to CCTV and tracking mobile phones. The police NEED such facilities as the internet becomes used more and more by terrorists and organised crime.