UK Email Retention Plan Technically Flawed 115
deltaromeo points out a BBC report calling the UK's law requiring ISPs to retain users' emails for at least a year an "attack on rights." The article also points out financial and technical flaws with the plan (which we first discussed in October). TechCrunch goes a step further, detailing how it conflicts with other governmental goals. Quoting:
"...with one hand the government seeks to lock down the British Internet with an iron fist, while at the same time telling us it is boosting innovation and business online. It is quite clearly blind to the fact that one affects the other. Are we also expected to think that the consumers using online services are not going to be put off from engaging in the boom of 'sharing' that Web 2.0 created? How would you feel if every Twitter you sent, every video uploaded, was to be stored and held against you in perpetuity? That may not happen, but the mere suggestion that your email is no longer private would serve to kill the UK population's relish for new media stone dead, and with it large swathes of the developing online economy."
Re:9/11 wasn't due to lack of information (Score:5, Funny)
Oh data mining can sift through threats to the status quo---erm I mean freedom! quite easily, believe me. Machine learning is capable of quite a bit of strange magic.
Re:If I were subject to having all my email stored (Score:4, Funny)
This is why my basement is wired with explosives.*
While the cops are entering through the front door, I am exiting out the back, so I can remotely detonate the bombs and blow them to Kingdom Come. (Unless of course they have a valid warrant signed by a judge, in which case they may enter peaceably.)
*
* I'm just kidding.
Or am I?