All your email are belong to us

By Davey Winder
Wednesday, 08 April 2009 03:31

Technology

EFF co-founder John Perry Barlow once said that "relying on the government to protect your privacy is like asking a peeping tom to install your window blinds." Guess who has just put the new blinds up in Britain?

Way back in 1999 the then Sun Microsystems head honcho, Scott McNealy, famously said that "You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it." For more than a year now that has been the case in the UK whenever you make a phone call, landline or mobile.

Legislation designed, as always seems to be the case when privacy is being whittled away along with citizen rights, to 'prevent crime and terrorism' means that the number and duration (plus location and direction of travel if a mobile call) have been recorded and kept on file for a year.

As of April 6th 2009 the same goes for your email conversations and Internet telephony calls. Courtesy of the introduction of The Data Retention (EC Directive) Regulations 2009 the date, time, duration and recipients will be logged by ISPs and have to be available for 12 months.

The government reasoning being the same old same old, ostensibly so that the Police or security services can investigate leads with regards to national security or organised crime.

Of course, this argument rather falls flat when you understand that the EC Directive is actually subject to the UK Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 200 which, rather amazingly, means that your online communications records can be viewed by a rag-tag bunch of local government and public bodies.

Yes, the email history (but not the email content) of any Brit will be available to the likes of the tax man if he asks to have a look as part of an investigation into your financial affairs or how about the local council taking a peek if you fail to pay a parking fine?
 
You could encrypt your data and then refuse to hand over the keys should a court ask for them, but if you refuse to do so then that is illegal as well. Not that the real organised criminals or terrorists will be paying much attention, one suspects.

It's not only the innocent public at large who will suffer from this 'all your email are belong to us' attitude being displayed by the British Government, but also the ISPs. I have heard some people suggesting that a single large ISP will need an additional 40 million GB of storage every year to meet the obligations.