Irish GSM Providers Asked to Track Users' Web Use 102
With the disclaimer "I'm both Irish and work for the EU Commission," reader VShael writes "The head of the Irish police force has requested that Irish cell phone providers (Vodafone, 02, Meteor, 3) retain detailed information on the web pages that people view over their handheld devices. This information would be held over for 'possible future criminal investigations', but would be gathered without a warrant, probable cause, or without the citizen being suspected of a crime. This request goes way beyond the European Union's data retention directive, which never included retention of web-based email. Representatives of Vodafone, O2 and 3 discussed the letter at a meeting with Mr Davis (6th November 2008) and questioned the legal basis under which they could retain this data. It is their understanding that the content of calls or e-mails, or details on webpages browsed, are excluded from the EU directive. As such, any retention or disclosure of that information would be a violation of existing EU data protection legislation."
Garda Commissioner (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Garda Commissioner (Score:5, Informative)
Did this guy not get legal advice pointing out that what he's asking for is almost definitely illegal/unconstitutional?
While it may contravene several EU regulations, I don't think it would be unconstitutional in Ireland. The police in Ireland, the Garda Siochana, have a wide variety of powers that would astonish most people; for example, you can be convicted of a crime solely on the word of a senior Guard. Many of these powers date back to the troubles and before that the civil war, but theres no fuss about them because they are rarely if ever used, and then only to put away the "teflon dons", where evidence is difficult to gather.
I'm of two minds about the request. On the one hand, the Guards have already got enough power to screw over anyone they want, and they haven't done so. Ireland is still a very community based culture, everyone knows everyone else sort of thing, and word gets around quick. The Guards in my experience are a highly professional group of men and women who make a habit of nipping trouble in the bud. Yes, I'm sure lots of people will come in with horror stories now, but you'll have that.
On the other hand, I am very wary of requests for further far reaching powers for their own sake. I suspect this has something to do with the massive influx of eastern Europeans into Ireland over the last six years (the population of the country actually grew by 10%). While for the most part these are good people, they also brought with them some unpleasant baggage, in the form of the Russian mafia, who have been quietly flexing their muscles lately in the Dublin underworld. These types would not fall under the usual categories, and would be much harder to control, what with the language barrier for a start.
I'd like to hear both sides of the story before throwing any stones.
Re:Garda Commissioner (Score:4, Interesting)
"The Guards in my experience are a highly professional group of men and women who make a habit of nipping trouble in the bud. Yes, I'm sure lots of people will come in with horror stories now, but you'll have that."
That probably depends on what part of the country you come from. The same families have been dealing drugs in the same place openly for at least fifteen years in my area. The guards are sitting in their station located two minutes walk away, and have never arrested anyone despite the complaints. They might stop some 15 year old with a bit of hash but wont touch the scumbags they saw sell it to them. That is not nipping trouble in the bud.
This whole thing is ridiculous, and stinks of some senior guard reading the UK headlines and thinking he should be proposing similar for his own sense of importance. It will be useless even if implemented.
Re:Garda Commissioner (Score:4, Interesting)
ok ill byte
as naturalized citizen emigrating from former soviet union many many years ago (cue soviet russia jokes) ill have to disagree on few points
firstly I have great respect for the Garda as most people here do, and yes Ireland is a small country where everyone knows everyone else, and yes i considered joining and they are looking for people who have can speak in several languages
i will also agree that most of the recent eastern europeans are hard working people and have helped this economy along by doing the jobs the irish were "above" doing in recent "boom" times, these are also the people who got the stick fastest in the current downturn
now i will disagree about the language barrier, english is very easy to pick up
also will disagree about the russian mafia. they are not here in ireland, and you have to realise that most people came here from russia to escape that sort of thing and have a family in peace
and to be honest the wouldnt be able to gain any turf as we have our own gangs in dublin who dont hesitate to kill each other, theres a gangland murder on the news practialy every day
also a point about immigrants to ireland that people might find interesting, they have to carry biometric green cards at all times and has to be produced when a Garda says "papers please!", no thats not a joke
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also (damn cant edit)
who (beside teenagers) actually uses GSM or even 3G phones to access webpages here? its just so damn expensive
but yes if this is true (slashdot editors are known to exagerate) then its craziness, and one more stick to beat the government with come next election
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who (beside teenagers) actually uses GSM or even 3G phones to access webpages here?
Professionals. It was them who first used GSM/3G. Teenagers discovered the technlogy much later. And professionals still are the most high-volume users of GSM/3G (talking about real professionals who have real tasks to do while travelling, not office clerks who just browse email etc).
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Strange that you should say it's expensive, I use 3 in the uk and can get net access for £5 a month. I also use 3's like home service when I am in ireland and still get my internet access at no extra cost (already paid for in the UK).
I don't know if it would apply to the hspda modems (priced from £10 for 1gb data to £20 -7gb) but probably it would.
3's network is a bit patchy - leading to a notorious problem where calls end up on a partner network and get charged at inter
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It's fairly cheap when you are in the home country of the SIM card you have purchased. The prices hit the roof once you go abroad (which is the main reason I would want to use such a service). Then you have the 5 pounds for th e day fee, then you are charged something like 1 pence per kilobyte. I know that a 1 Megabyte PDF document cost 10 pounds, and that surfing slashdot on any day cost me 5 pounds.
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i will also agree that most of the recent eastern europeans are hard working people and have helped this economy along by doing the jobs the irish were "above" doing in recent "boom" times
Sorry now, but thats nonsense. The Irish were never "above" doing certain jobs, unless you thought every single man woman and child in the country was rich enough never to have to worry about working. Plainly rubbish. What happened was the Eastern Europeans got wind of the country's newfound wealth and showed up in huge numbers to take advantage of this and send the cash to buy their house back home. It would have been the equivalent of 35 million people moving into the US since 2000. Where were they when t
Re:Garda Commissioner (Score:4, Informative)
The Guards in my experience are a highly professional group of men and women who make a habit of nipping trouble in the bud.
Ha ha ha haaa ha ha haaaa ha ha! You made me spit my coffee with that humdinger.
There's no point in telling you any horror stories but myself, both my brothers and most of my friends bear the scars of Garda professionalism. From beatings to planted drugs to just plain discourteous treatment (being treated like shit because you're a young, Dublin male so CLEARLY must be up to something...) they cover the lot.
"Professional" as in they get paid for what they do, I suppose.
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From beatings to planted drugs to just plain discourteous treatment (being treated like shit because you're a young, Dublin male so CLEARLY must be up to something...) they cover the lot.
And you hear the same complaint from people around the world, oddly enough usually with little to no evidence. You can always contact the Garda Ombudsman if you have a complaint.
"Professional" as in they get paid for what they do, I suppose.
Professional in that they are a largely unarmed police force who still get the better of heavily armed Dublin crime gangs and make it look easy. Not always I'll grant you, but they are doing a lot better than many armed forces I could mention.
Re:Garda Commissioner (Score:5, Interesting)
And you hear the same complaint from people around the world, oddly enough usually with little to no evidence. You can always contact the Garda Ombudsman if you have a complaint.
No you can't. If you're trying to reduce the level of harassment you're suffering then best keep quiet and get on with your life.
How do you gather evidence of the Gardai knocking to your house every day and demand you drop your complaint? Or spending the night getting kicked up and down a police station? When the only witnesses are other Gardai it's literally your word against theirs and that never works out in your favour. If they weren't careful and left a mark sure, he fell down the stairs, your honour. Got his hand caught in a door. Tripped over his shoelaces.
You hear the same complaint from people around the world because ALL police forces are heavy handed and act with impunity. I'm not lying - I have no reason to. I've been beaten. My friends have been beaten. Other friends have had their houses raided with unsigned warrants. Someone I know had a large amount of cannabis planted on him (or rather thrown near him - this is a matter of public record - the case was dismissed as laughable).
This shite goes on every single day.
At least the Mayday Bank Holiday protesters a few years ago had video evidence of disgraceful Garda behaviour but I don't carry recording equipment with me at all times so when one of them calls me a fucker because he doesn't like long haired guys in T shirts there's not a fucking thing I can do but walk away and pound impotent rage out of a wall or into a bottle.
It doesn't happen any more - I'm older now (old, fat and affluent looking, if still long haired and T shirt clad) and could be earning any sort of money to fight them in court but young men are still being beaten and harrassed for no better reason than they're young men - sure, youngfellas are always up to no good, especially around here.
I'm sure I'll hear about bad apples now but fucked if I've ever met a good one.
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No you can't.
Yes, you can. You see the same rubbish everytime someone speaks in favour of the police anytime on Slashdot, call it a symptom of the group mind.
If you're trying to reduce the level of harassment you're suffering then best keep quiet and get on with your life.
Bollocks. You know what you just said? You were harassed for being a young Dublin male in Dublin. Does it not strike you as a bit odd that no other "young Dublin males", a fairly hefty portion of the population of the city, were harassed? Or are the guards hassling the entire population of the city now? It makes no sense even at first glance.
I'm not lying - I have no reason to.
Who said you needed one
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Yes, you can. You see the same rubbish everytime someone speaks in favour of the police anytime on Slashdot, call it a symptom of the group mind.
It's not rubbish - they beat the shit out of me for a whole night in Pearse St Station. I'd been knocked unconscious outside a night club and was arrested (as in dragged unconscious off the ground) before the ambulance arrived. This was over 8 years and it still boils my blood... and it wasn't just one of them, it was all on duty having a go. Nobody stepping in to stop it. Disgusting, inhuman stuff.
If I were to complain I would expect them at the door - it's not unheard of.
Bollocks. You know what you just said? You were harassed for being a young Dublin male in Dublin. Does it not strike you as a bit odd that no other "young Dublin males", a fairly hefty portion of the population of the city, were harassed? Or are the guards hassling the entire population of the city now? It makes no sense even at first glance.
No, just the entire population who
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In the immortal words of Father Ted Crilley -
"Down with this sort of thing!"
The man must be a fecking eejit even to think that this sort of data gathering is acceptable.
"Russian mafia" issue (Score:1)
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On the one hand, the Guards have already got enough power to screw over anyone they want, and they haven't done so.
Are you on the same island that I am? Ever hear of the McBreartys [indymedia.ie]. Basically the Guards made the mistake of trying to frame a family who had the resources to fight back - God only knows how many families they use the same tactics with who don't have those resources. There was another spectacular case of Garda corruption that ruined the life of an innocent man whose name escapes me at the mo
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In Ireland, we do not have what you would call Laws. What we have are more like Customs.
For example, it is customary in Ireland that no one need carry identification papers. Now, you do need a drivers license to drive a car, but it is customary, by the custom above, that this is not usually asked for by a Garda when you are stopped at say a road checkpoint for example. It is however, custom
Orwell Estate... (Score:3, Funny)
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In any case just sue him! :D
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Encryption (Score:4, Interesting)
Yet another reason why Firefox's stupid warnings on self-signed certificates are wrong.
Another reason why HTTPS is a stupid standard.
We need viable encryption of all traffic, now.
Rich.
Re:Encryption (Score:5, Insightful)
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'Very easy' if you are a cryptographer, but very difficult in practice. The computer hardware costs would be high and ISPs do not have the technical expertise required. Furthermore, while snooping on plaintext connections just requires listening to the traffic as it passes, a MITM attack requires actively meddling with the data and pretending to be somebody else. This is far
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Well, it's not really dificult , if you include the human factor : a MITM attack will ensure that the site (fake or not ) , can only be visited by accepting the fake certificate.
So while it may not work with everyone , people who really want to see the site they think is safe , will accept it anyway. And i wouldn't underestimate the size of that user group.
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'Very easy' if you are a cryptographer, but very difficult in practice. The computer hardware costs would be high and ISPs do not have the technical expertise required. Furthermore, while snooping on plaintext connections just requires listening to the traffic as it passes, a MITM attack requires actively meddling with the data and pretending to be somebody else. This is far too much of a legal risk for any legitimate business like an ISP.
In the Australian trials for Internet censorship software, 5 of the 6 filters had the ability to filter HTTPS traffic by performing a MITM attack.
This forgery would be evident, unless the filter had access to a trusted signing key.
Mozilla's decision to show strong warnings for self-signed certificates is justified, because if the certificates were accepted blindly, governments/attackers would easily be able to hijack HTTPS by forging "self-signed" certificates.
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Very easy for anyone: you simply set up an SSL-enabled proxy and redirect all Web traffic through it. Without certificates, you have no way of knowing whether you have an encrypted channel to the target server, or to a proxy which then talks to the server on your behalf and logs all the traffic passing thr
Firefox plugin prevents local MITM attacks (Score:2)
It would be very easy for an ISP to perform man-in-the-middle attacks on supposedly secure sites which use self-signed certificates.
Not necessarily. There's a Firefox plugin called Perspectives [cmu.edu] that prevents MITM attacks that are confined to a limited IP block, such as one initiated by an ISP.
It works by getting several remote servers to query the site and send the certificate back to the browser. If the certificate the remote sites see is the same as the certificate your browser sees, then you can bee certain your ISP isn't performing a MITM attack.
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But does it make self-signed HTTPS worse than plain HTTP? HTTP is the most insecure and easiest to attack. Why should it be harder to use the more secure one?
The only thing that's worse is that they might feel secure when they're not. But that don't justify making it harder to visit HTTPS-sites. Just notify the user in a sane way.
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The only thing that's worse is that they might feel secure when they're not.
That is exactly what an ISP would want. You would have the correct URL, the correct IP address and everything would look correct. But your traffic would be monitored by the ISP (in some kind of transparent proxy).
Being able to save a certificate and not having a message pop up every time it is seen would be useful. The first time you came across a certificate you should get a warning message. But if you can manually verify the certificate then you should be able to silently accept it in the future.
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Encryption without trust is bunk. Remember that when you're sending your encrypted credit card number to someone you don't trust .
Generating self-signed certificates that match the site is a trivial process for any reasonably-well equipped man-in-the-middle. Which is the kind of men-in-the-middle we're talking about: an almighty terrorist government or ISPs that are forced to work for them.
Only signed certificates provide any recourse against snooping on ISP level and with ISP large-busineess financial reso
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Nonsense, you can easily detect if someone forges certs in a man-in-the-middle attack by comparing signatures after the fact.
But you can't detect massive dragnet surveillance of the type actually being carried out by government organizations.
Let's not confuse some theoretical, hard-to-do, impossible-to-get-away-with attack from what is actually happening in the real world now.
Rich.
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Nonsense, you can easily detect if someone forges certs in a man-in-the-middle attack by comparing signatures after the fact.
Alas, that runs up against practical problems too. Server keys get compromised for stupid reasons. They also expire (which is good!) and services get moved around for stupid marketing reasons and crap like that. Almost all of these are not problems that should be exposed to users; you only want to pop up a warning dialog when something is really wrong so users won't get habituated to them.
Given that, plus the fact that you also want to protect users who don't have the signatures stored, you're advocating ki
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The kind of 'almighty terrorist government' that decides to monitor your web browsing is far more likely to be the government of the USA or allied countries. And they can quite easily MITM your traffic if they want (do you really think that the NSA doesn't have copies of Verisign's root keypair?). If you are really concerned about that you need to exchange PGP keys in person and certainly not rely on a flimsy chain of trust running from Verisign through other crappy signing authorities to your browser.
On
Trust (Score:2)
Ever see all the CA certs preinstalled in your browser? Count them.
1) Do you trust all of those CAs? Do you even really know who they are?
2) Have you bothered to remove the certs of CAs you have no good reason to trust?
3) For instance can you really trust Verisign/NS? They issue Microsoft certs to the wrong parties, hijack domains, lock domains just because you search for them.
Now, tell me how much worse is accepting a self signed cert compared to accepting a cert issued by
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Generating self-signed certificates that match the site is a trivial process for any reasonably-well equipped man-in-the-middle.
In fact, it's trivial for anyone who can master the (admittedly large) hurdle of reading and understanding the documentation of openssl. Doing the MITM then just requires a careful bit of DNS poisoning, or DDoS attack, or sending a fake webpage, or any number of techniques that have been seen in the wild.
The only time a self-signed certificate is at all useful is when you get all parties wanting to trust the cert to know the certificate directly first using out-of-band techniques, e.g. by meeting the other
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Not wrong at all... because if firefox just permitted self-signed certs to pass unnoticed, then providers (like Orange, 3, etc) could snoop all your "secure" traffic - and rewrite it on the way through, too. Anyone can generate a self-signed certificate, and doing it on the fly in an environment where response times are typically large and delays taken for granted is trivial.
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Firstly, no one is suggesting that Firefox should mark self-signed certified sites as "secure". What's wrong is the giant error message it shows instead. Why not show the same error message and require > 4 clicks for unencrypted pages too, since they are clearly worse than self-signed pages. It should mark these pages just the same way as it does with unencrypted sites.
Secondly, Orange could perform a man-in-the-middle attack (with expensive hardware) but you can detect this after the fact by checking
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One mark of unencrypted pages is http: at the beginning of the URL. Users have been told to look for https: to be sure it's a secure conn
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The browser could *lie* and show "http:" if that is necessary to make you happy.
Also has been suggested that it show "httpe:", that would allow cut & paste to work (as it would turn that into https when sending the url).
You could also tell people to look at the color or look for the "lock" icon. I certainly don't know of any users who look for "https", they look for the lock.
Really the arguments against this are getting silly. Self-signed should work and be treated at least as well as unencrypted pages.
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Really the arguments against this are getting silly. Self-signed should work and be treated at least as well as unencrypted pages. It does seem possible that there are powerful forces trying to get the browsers to not like self-signed certificates because the arguments for Firefox's behavior are getting really out there...
Then explain to me why it is so important to support self-signed certificates. They really are less secure than those that have been signed by a trusted third party as it's trivial to generate them on demand. All you're asking to do is to turn HTTPS into yet more security theatre.
Note that you don't have to trust the CAs that everyone else uses. Having one for you and your friends is perfectly fine, and doesn't have any of the problems. (You don't really need to defend your online banking from governments t
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Then explain to me why it is so important to support self-signed certificates. They really are less secure than those that have been signed by a trusted third party as it's trivial to generate them on demand.
Because they are more secure than unencrypted. Yes they are vulnerable to MIM attacks, but the are NOT vulnerable to simple snooping!
Current Firefox behavior makes them look *worse* than unencrypted, which is WRONG!!!!
Really all I (and hundreds of others) want is for Firefox to accept self-signed withou
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Viable encryption would have to be universal with the source shared to allow all the server and client platforms to work together.
We are talking about governments with effectively limitless access to computer power versus encryption light weight enough to run transparently on a low end cell phone it wouldn't be hard to make the ISP capture the encrypted traffic and decode later at your leisure.
Universal law. (Score:5, Informative)
"This information would be held over for 'possible future criminal investigations', but would be gathered without a warrant, probable cause, or without the citizen being suspected of a crime. "
Remember people the "world" isn't "the US". Warrants, probable cause, and presumption of innocence aren't universal.
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I'd hope someone from Ireland would be capable of making that distinction.
Although it's entirely possible that VShael has been watching too much American TV. I believe that probable cause, even if it exists elsewhere, is only actually called 'probable cause' in the US.
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Actually, I chose the term because although the story is of more interest to Irish readers, the vast vast majority of slashdot readers ARE American. Framing the issue in terms they would understand, is simply common sense. (For the same reason, I listed the GSM providers, and explained what the Gardai are. Totally uncessary for Irish readers.)
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"Remember people the "world" isn't "the US". Warrants, probable cause, and presumption of innocence aren't universal."
Good point. Not even in the US does it apply to all people.
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Yeah, but they're pretty good ideas. Given that all men are created equal, I think we all deserve the highest standards of human rights.
Unfortunately, Just the tip of the Iceberg... (Score:2)
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There is NO legitimate need for any ISP to record anything you do over their network since you, as a subscriber, are paying for the use of said network. I am tempted to unplug from the Internet and go back to life before all this intrusion. Oh that's right... the library has to keep lists of the books you read in case the police might need to know what you read. Orwell would be terrified his fictional predictions have become everyday reality.
USB GSM modems... (Score:1)
What about all the good folk who "broadband" through the GS network?.. I've checked the date, and it's not 1st April in any known time zone the I can find, but this has to be a joke??
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Since the Glenrothes by election, i'd say days, probably.
I'm getting sick of this (Score:3, Insightful)
It's 'way past time the service providers grew a set and sent a resounding "Fuck you!" to these fascist pricks. And it's also 'way past time those of us who live alleged democracies to start demanding some privacy protection. I'm a lot more frightened of Big Brother than some whack-job terrorist. The terrorist might manage to kill a few of us. Big Brother will sit down hard on ALL of us and never, get off.
The best I ever heard it put was by an English commentator. He said we need to recall that the freedom we're so thoughtlessly flushing down the toilet isn't even ours to give away. It was bought and paid for with the blood of our parents and grandparents and great-grandparents.
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The best I ever heard it put was by an English commentator. He said we need to recall that the freedom we're so thoughtlessly flushing down the toilet isn't even ours to give away. It was bought and paid for with the blood of our parents and grandparents and great-grandparents.
Not only that, but we're guarding it for our children and grandchildren. If we give up our freedoms for convenience and safety now, how will they look at us in the future? How many of you want to be remember as a coward who gave up so much, for so very little?
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why do you think they would like to stop this?
out of... morals?
fascist user control is more than good for isps
Trying to be very political... and failing! (Score:5, Informative)
Well, I'm Irish and I work for the Irish Government (Civil Servant, minor role).
To my mind, it looks like that Garda Commissioner has tried to be very smart, but ended up looking very stupid. People on Slashdot probably don't know, but the Irish government decided recently to 'merge' the Data Protection Commissioner (DPC) - the independent body that made sure noone, including the government and police, misused people's private data or were overly invasive - with a whole host of other, barely related organisations.
Thankfully, they were made climb down and back away from their original plans which looked - from an outsider's point of view - like they were using the 'merger' to scrap some of the more thorny Agencies that regularly complain about government policy and the police altogether. (When the Secretary General of the UN called to make 'observations' on the plan, I think they realised they had overstretched themselves a bit!)
However, they are still in a position where they can't lose too much face, and a 'merger' is still on the cards - except this time, it probably is a merger along the lines of sharing buildings and stationery orders. What the guard probably saw that the DPC was still on the cards for a merger without realising that is wasn't screwed over as badly as was initially intended. Or else he realised that he couldn't now just wait a year and then be able to force through his agenda without a State Agency that could effectively oppose him. Whatever the reason, he decided to rush in there to stick his oar into the operators.
He probably wasn't expecting the operators to go public, nor did he realise that the DPC is still operating effectively.
He deserves it, though. The Irish police (the 'guards') are notoriously weak on a technical level. They are so technophobic, they even call their computer people 'gits'! (Garda Information Technology section.)
As an example, many guards use Google or Yahoo email address as their official email addresses. Despite having set aside time and money for it years ago, most guards and, indeed, some police stations do not have email addresses. These free email addresses are used to communicate information about serious crimes, crime-scene photos etc. How's that for 'web-based email security'??? (For god's sake, nobody tell them about 'Flicker'!!!)
I also have occasion to know that many case records still exist only in the little black notebooks of individual guards. No such thing as entering a current investigation on a secure system or even having a typed version of ongoing case notes. This is after investing millions in a police system called 'PULSE'. This was supposed to be a secure system for recording all aspects of a case. You can't even upload a picture to the system, logs people out after five minutes of inactivity - even though it takes more then two minutes to log in and so on. It cost millions, yet the police still sometimes have to fall back to typewriters!
Even extends to basic tech like radios. A lot of them have to bring their own mobile phones to work. Either their radio system doesn't work in some areas or was never installed properly or their handsets have been broken and out of commission for a long time. And so on.
This, despite all our brilliant legislation about electronic signatures, eCommerce and so on.
(I'll also ad the disclaimer that this is not the area of the Service that I work in).
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Many of these are symptoms of trying to run the country on thin air, so that we can have lower personal tax than many other countries, amazingly low corporation tax, no domestic rates whatsoever, etc. etc. These all have many positive points (we have jobs and keep the money - well, apart from forking out over the odds for education, health, transport, crime), but basically even during the Celtic Tiger, the government couldn't for example ensure that schools actually have running costs paid for (currently pr
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You are work for very thick-headed.
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is this even technically grammatically incorrect? When I read something like this, I read it as being understood that it means something like "I am both Irish and I work for the EU Commission", except with the second 'I' dropped because it's redundant and obvious what the subject of the second verb is. Using "I'm" instead of "I am" seems like it confuses a little, but doesn't change the meaning at all.
what's the proper answer to this? It seems like to read it as "I am Irish and I am work" is due to the i
Webmail is not excluded by EU DRD (Score:3, Informative)
Technically, the EU Data Retention Directive requires retention of comms data pertaining to 'Internet E-mail' - it doesn't make a distinction between SMTP/POP3 e-mail and web-based e-mail.
If an ISP is running a mail system for its customers, then it should have comms data from use of its own mail system. For webmail, it should be the organisation running the webmail system which retains this data & provides it to the police on request - as the ISP obviously knows nothing about this without digging into all the traffic its customers pass over the network. Of course, many webmail systems are outside the jurisdiction of the EU - which causes a bit of a problem!
Whether this is a good thing or bad thing is an interesting debate & I think less obvious than the case made by privacy advocates tends to state. The police have relied on such comms data from telephone systems for decades to help catch the bad guys ...
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"The police have relied on such comms data from telephone systems for decades to help catch the bad guys ..."
Irish police have been tapping every phone call in the country for decades just in case the caller might be a crook?
Damn, I'm so glad I don't live there then.
Next Library Book Lists. (Score:2)
Right Answer / Wrong Answer (Score:1)
Industry sources indicated that Vodafone has met Garda representatives to discuss the letter...
Right Answer: "No."
Wrong Answer: Anything other than "No.", although "Go f*ck yourselves!" would be acceptable.
uhh... (Score:1)