Hank

Pete, do you agree with this?

In the third paragraph of the letter from the EU Commission:

In particular Member States are to ensure the confidentiality of communications and related traffic data through national legislation. They are required to prohibit interception or surveillance of communications and the related traffic data by persons other than the users without the consent. Traffic data may only be processed for certain defined purposes (eg billing) and for a limited period. The subscriber must be informed about such processing. Additional processing requires anonymisation or prior consent of the subscriber or user.

Clearly this means that in the BT trial of the DPI kit/system from Phorm, the lack of BT to inform their customers was wrong, because it was not in the Ts & Cs given by BT beforehand.

Secondly, the internal paper leaked from BT showed "additional processing" was taking place (changing the web page content - the charity advert swap). So because the subscriber or user gave no prior consent, BT was wrong there too.

So, with regard to interception of customer internet data streams in 2006 and 2007:

"The commission will continue to follow this case and take approriate action, should the need arise, to ensure that the relevant EU law is effectively implemented by the UK authorities on this matter"

If the police don't investigate (which I think we have now solidly identifed is the requirement under the RIPA issue) then our next course of action is to use the EC formal complaint process to lodge against our member state's inaction.

Agreed?

Awaiting a response from our police service here. And awaiting a response to the report made by Alex to the police in London... Either of them actually doing something and passing their results to the CPS means we can hold off on the EC bit (as long as it goes into court - ref the points in the letter which state that the government here must have effective laws and must provide the resource to enforce them)

I've thought about progressing the EC complaint route now, but have decided in my case I will wait until I hear from the police (who have received my recorded delivery letter)

Hank
(PS - Thanks for typing/scanning your copy of the letter in!)