[Gllug] email logging

[Alain Williams]

Below is a letter that I wrote to the BBC PM radio programme. Anyone got
any comments just in case they do 'phone me:



Subject: Keeping email records

Hi,

this is completely misguided as it will not do much to stop savvy criminals/terrorists
but will impose a cost on the 'innocent' rest of society.

Why ?

There is an assumption that *all* email passes through the ISP email servers.
Although most people do, not everyone does. It is easy to arrange for email
to be send direct to your home PC bypassing the ISP's email servers - I do
this because I want to experience the day to day issues of working like this
(I am an IT consultant). Corporations (eg the BBC) do this as a matter of
course and I know many individuals who do this because it is fun.

OK: get the ISP to log all TCP connections to port 25 (technobabble meaning
detect & record direct email transfers). The work/cost to the ISP to do this
will be great. Once it is known that this sort of 'sniffing' is done, then
the criminals will start using non standard port numbers for instance port 80
(eg disguise email traffic as web traffic) or something else.

None of this is technically difficult to do, but hugely increases the cost
to the ISP and the cost to the police of analysing this data.

Yes: this logging will catch naive criminals, but it would be a mistake to
think al-Qaeda naive.

If you want to further explore what I have written - phone me on the number
below.

-- 
Alain Williams
Parliament Hill Computers Ltd.
Linux Consultant - Mail systems, Web sites, Networking, Programmer, IT Lecturer.
+44 (0) 787 668 0256  http://www.phcomp.co.uk/

#include <std_disclaimer.h>
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