On Tuesday, June 11, 2002, at 05:47 PM, Martin Garton wrote:
> Has anyone seen this yet? Just wondered if anyone might be interested in
> getting a few ppl together and trying to arrangine a visit to a
> nottingham
> MP?
I'd say "yes, go for it, by all means" but...
1. I live in Loughborough (someone has to!)
2. I went through the try-to-make-your-MP-aware-of-your-concerns
procedure when the RIP Bill was being, shall we say, "debated" in the
lower & upper Houses. He was less than helpful, pretty much toeing the
Party line (caps intentional) that the whole shebang was a done deal.
Admittedly, this time around the proposals seem to have raised more
hackles than previously (front pages of papers, BBC breakfast news, that
sort of thing) and there's a chance that Uncle Tony might actually end
up having to back down. There again, they managed to get the RIP Act
through by "compromising" on things which seemed to be put in to grab
headlines in the first place.
War against terrorism? I doubt it. This is a simple knee-jerk reaction
to a runaway success in communications which has not been regulated from
day one. The telephone systems have always been heavily regulated, the
old postal system was a goverment dept. so tampering with Her Majesty's
Mail was (although illegal) very simple if you had the right badge. The
whole principle of the internet being as anarchic as it is strikes fear
into the heart of all governments, whether democratic - or not. I use
the word "democratic" advisedly; having tried to get my MP to represent
the views of their constituents (on student loans, and RIP originally)
twice and failed miserably. And I thought that was what the mandate we
give them is for, not to kow-tow to some berk in Millbank or Central
Office.
And for those of you (us) running mail servers, regardless of size, it
means you'll have to start archiving your logs for an extremely long
time. Running a web proxy? Likewise. Imagine the horror that raises in
me... several tens of thousands of domains, hundreds of thousands of
email users. Frightening. Gigabytes, if not terabytes of data per month.
Big Brother is your postman. Well, not yet, but if it goes through...
<shiver>
Worried? You betcha.
Graeme
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