[Moderator: Something about 'keeping all e-mail for a week' seems a BIT
out of line to me.]
Forwarded From: Nicholas Charles Brawn <ncb05@uow.edu.au>
22Oct98 UK: PERSPECTIVE - POLICE SHOULD STICK TO THE RULE BOOK.
By Colin Barker.
In a series of meetings with Internet service providers (ISPs), the police
have proposed ways in which ISPs could give police better access to
various electronic communications, including email and bulletin boards.
For example, the police would like the ISPs to keep all emails for a week.
That way, if the police want to check on an email that may or may not have
been sent at a particular time, they can - providing it was sent in the
previous week.
The police are worried about criminal behaviour that they, and the media,
call Internet crime. This is a ragbag of offences, of which the activities
of paedophiles is the best known.
Internet crime also includes fraud - people allegedly moving large sums of
money from someone else's bank account into their own; extortion - hackers
demanding money backed by the threat of 'information terrorism'; and
espionage - whether it be hackers infiltrating defence systems or
professionals searching for industrial secrets.
These are well-known, well-established crimes. The fact that the
perpetrators now often use computers to execute their crimes does not
create a new category of criminal.
What is worrying the police is that criminals have been faster, when it
comes to exploiting the technology, than the police forces of the world.
Rather than let the criminals get away with it, the police want to gain
access to the technology to use it themselves to track criminals.
Is there anything wrong with this?
Well, try this for size: what if the police proposed that all telephone
calls should be taped and kept for a week - just in case they wanted to
listen to some conversations that could help them with their enquiries?
Quite apart from the physical problems - the cost of millions of tape
drives or thousands of terabytes of digitally stored and compressed voice
data - there is the question of privacy.
If the police want to tape telephone conversations they need a special
order. Why should the regulations be any different for email? And that's
the point. The police and the ISPs are meeting because the police want to
talk about a 'code of conduct' for ISPs to keep information and store it,
when necessary, while at the same time maintaining the balance of personal
privacy.
But I suspect there is no need for any of this. When the police follow
the correct procedures they already have the resources to intercept 'snail
mail' or listen in on telephone conversations.
There is nothing different about the Internet. It has not created a new
category of crime or criminals, nor has it created a special category of
communications.
It is just new and different, a combination which often invokes panic in
government and police.
Police representatives will put their case in Computing next week.
-o-
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Received on Sat Oct 24 12:14:53 1998