Crazy UK law makes ISPs keep logs of every email sent and received for 1 year

Starting in March, all ISPs in the UK are required to keep track of every email sent and received for a year and to provide that information to the government to help fight terrorists. Not only that, but they are going to pay the ISPs to do it. What colossal waste of money and invasion of privacy!

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to “Crazy UK law makes ISPs keep logs of every email sent and received for 1 year”

  1. Justin
    January 12, 2009 at 9:48 am #

    Wow.

    Isn't it kind of late in the national security game to be doing that?

    I mean, that sort of disregard for privacy is soooo 2003 ;-)

  2. Ricardo Ramos
    January 12, 2009 at 1:44 pm #

    The first anti-spam law which has been hugely discussed in Brazil points out the same requirement, keep track of every email sent for a year and. The government are not going to pay the ISPs to do it though.

  3. Alan Smith - CEO - Oprius.com
    January 13, 2009 at 2:36 pm #

    I am the CEO of an ISP in Canada and can't imagine the extra cost to the ISP for this kind of storage. For example the email folder in our data base for our hosted app is 50% of the file size. On top of the extra cost, we now have to worry about deliverability which for us take a fair amount of time, and the legal requirement and reporting to the government. Glad I live in Canada and don't have to worry about these regulations (YET!). Here's hoping Canada does not get involved in this trend.

  4. Bill Volz
    January 22, 2009 at 12:45 pm #

    This means that not only will the government have access to the email for a year but the ISP, some of it's employee's and and possibly someone who hacks in to their system.

    Bad idea!

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