[ILUG] Completely loo-lah law requiring retention of e-mail headers for 3 years

[Steve McConville]

> You can message someone on Facebook - and presumably the only trace is the
> HTTP traffic between you and some Facebook server, and the notification
> email to the recipient from some other Facebook server.
>
> Or Bebo.

I think you're wrong. See http://www.facebook.com/policy.php and
http://www.bebo.com/Privacy.jsp, both operators are deliberately vague
about when they will decide to hand over data to legal authorities,
and both explicitly make provision for it.

Also, are you seriously saying that you would expect, say, estate
agents or banks to conduct business by leaving messages on each
others' facebook accounts?

Nevertheless your basic point is valid. Anyone needing to use emails
to coordinate some kind of crime or military coup or whatever could
easily learn what a VPN is, or even SFTP emails into one anothers'
inboxes. It is technically possible to assure privacy and/or
anonymity, with or without email header logging.

A law requiring it is, therefore, either stupid or simply not intended
to target criminals.

-- 
steev
http://www.daikaiju.org.uk/~steve/