>>>Britain. The government is to require internet service
>>>providers, such as
>>>Freeserve and AOL, to have "hardwire" links to the new
>>>computer facility so
>>>that messages can be traced across the internet.
>
> Isn't this identical to Russian policy?
Very similar - although the Russian plan ("SORM") was announced almost 2
years ago, it's likely that it only has to cope with considerably smaller
total bandwidth than the UK system will. The technical blueprint of the
implementation options, and comprehensive background is at www.fipr.org/rip
At the moment most UK ISPs are putting up a good fight to retain local
control of what data is copied, but the high-end technical option
recommended by the government's consultants is to abstract ALL backbone
traffic, and leave the government to sort out what it is entitled to see
under warrant. The legislation (the "RIP" Bill) would allow this, and also
not require any warrant to capture traffic data (e.g. logs of websites
visted).
--
Caspar Bowden Tel: +44(0)20 7354 2333
Director, Foundation for Information Policy Research
RIP Information Centre at: www.fipr.org/rip#media
