On Tue, Jun 11, 2002 at 06:13:24PM +0100, Graeme Fowler wrote:
> 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!)
I'm in West Bridgford. Ken Clark is the MP. I would be surprised if he
really wants to come out of the back benches *again*... Probably still
worth writing though.
> 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.
I would imagine that most people simply have no idea of what this means
because they don't understand anything about how the internet works,
have no idea of any community spirit and simply don't understand the
link that the RIP bill has to human rights.
They probably view people who object to it, as objecting because they
have something to hide. No offense to anyone on this list, but generally
it is people under 40 who are in anyway clued up about the internet,
email, etc etc, whilst most of the MPs in this country are over 40 and
would, I would imagine, view the whole internet with a great deal of
mistrust.
It's a shame, but I don't think they would actually buy a 'I archived it
all under /dev/null and now it's gone' excuse which is a pity.
> 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.
Probably spin. Blair will never apologise, never admit he's done anything
wrong. If he backs down then the USA will be mightily pissed off. It
would also set a precident and perhaps delay, or tone down, the EU
equivalent of any SSSCA or extensions of DMCA.
> 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.
I don't follow: why would the success of the internet (and in what way
do you mean success?) create the need for the RIP bill. The RIP bill
does not in any way may the internet a government controlled system.
They would probably have to spend the duration of a government in order
to construct anything that is going to be able to hold this amount of
data. It could well cause a huge increase in ISP charges and slow down
the entire industry. Of course I would imaging hard discs will get
cheaper which would be nice!
> 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.
I would think that if the MP really understood what you were telling
them, or had some kind of first hand knowledge of some of the monuments
of computing that the internet has allowed to develope then the MP would
probably have had a greater interest in representing your views.
Yes, the telephones have been regulated, but AFAIK, the police still
have to have a warrent (or whatever: too much US tv here!) to be able to
tap/record your phone conversations. I realise that the RIP is only on
email headers, but still, email headers give you much more information
than a telephone bill. With a telephone bill you don't know which model
of phone they used. Nor is it important. So why then is it important to
have the full headers, including which MUA is being used. Surely the
contents of the maillogs will tell them everything they need to know.
> 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.
Even if it is a private gateway? That is bad. What if you're not even a
registered ISP (um, does that exist: maybe I just mean a private ISP or
a non commercial ISP, like what home gateways do!), are you still required
to archive and store all your logs?
> Big Brother is your postman. Well, not yet, but if it goes through...
> <shiver>
> Worried? You betcha.
I guess the answer may be to have colocated servers on some weird
private little Island (that is uninhabitable because of traces of nerve
gas found there after the Nazis used it during WWII) in the middle of
the pacific and to use that as SMTP gateway and proxy and run lots of
stunnels.
Hmm. Matthew
--Matthew Sackman Nottingham England
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