In the holy name of terror…
The danish government has chosen to panic due to the recent terror-attacks in both London and USA. I say panic, because certain legislation has been issued that is supposed to prevent terror – that doesn’t work – and where the implementation makes everyday life difficult for some groups of people.
As an example of this legislation – ISP’s are supposed to keep logs of all the email that they handle – and similarly they are supposed to keep logs of chat-rooms and the like… on the surface this might seem a good idea… why not do everything we can to prevent terror?
Well, it has often been said that the best way to prevent terror is to carry on everyday life because terrorists wants us to be scared – that is their sole purpose. So, on an idealistic note – it is wrong – and sends a message that is wrong.
But back to why, I think they panicked – there are limitations to the legislation – public libraries and schools are excempt from it… only public companies are to keep these logs. This also means that private mailservers, IRC-servers and so on are excempt. What do they think? That terrorists are stupid? Some might be – but the ones that would succeed with a terrorist attack are far from stupid.
It will be extremely easy to avoid being ‘caught on tape’ – just use your own mailserver, go to the library or use a non-public server (for that matter just use something that isn’t within the reach of danish legislation).
Next, try imagining how much data we are talking… it’s EVERY email, EVERY line of chat in every public and private chatroom – and it is to be kept for a minimum of three years… THREE years… that is thousands of terabyte…
Third but not least… imagine the colossal task of going through these huge amounts of data to find a conversation, that _might_ be related to terror… I say good luck. Again, they under-estimate terrorists – terrorists would probably know that this legislation exists – and would take precautions – maybe encrypting their e-mail… write in code… or better yet – use proxies. This would mean that we might actually get the wrong guy – and we would have not only harrassed someone not deserving it – but also wasted precious time looking for the proverbial needle in a hay-stack.
I think, we are walking a very thin line here – we are trying to make Big Brother overnight – and not even a very good model. We only target electronic messaging – what about the normal mail? Oh wait – that is secured by the danish law… Hmm… what exactly is the difference between normal mail and the electronic version? I’m sorry, but I have a hard time finding it…
Yes, we should combat terror – there is no doubt about it, but how about we actually think it through and don’t under-estimate our foe before we do something instead of just using trial and error? We are wasting precious ressources on something that only has one sure outcome – it’s a helluva burden for ISP’s.