Uk Government Interception Proposals Criticised
Martin Burns
Member info
User since: 26 Apr 1999
Articles written: 143
Demon Internet, the ISP singlehandely responsible for kick-starting the UK's Net industry, branded the UK government's recent consultation on interception of online communications as unrealistic and unreasonably expensive.
In a press release, the world's fourth largest hosting operation claimed that the proposals would put UK ISPs and hosting operations at a competitive disadvantage in the global market. They would require bespoke versions of routing hardware and software to intercept datastreams, and extremely high bandwidth links to law-enforcement agencies. In a market where the costs depend entirely on efficient transmission of data, and economies of scale gained from purchasing industry-standard equipment, Demon claim the government's proposals to be entirely unreasonable.
With the biggest player in the market against them (Demon are also one of the largest providers of connectivity, and cover all market segments from modems to leased lines), these proposals may be dead in the water. For all it's 'New Britain' rhetoric, this government just doesn't get it.
For more information about the UK's creaking progress towards eCommerce legislation, see Seb's article.
Martin Burns has been doing this stuff since Netscape 1.0 days. Starting with the communication ends that online media support, he moved back through design, HTML and server-side code. Then he got into running the whole show. These days he's working for these people as a Project Manager, and still thinks (nearly 6 years on) it's a hell of a lot better than working for a dot-com. In his Copious Free Time™, he helps out running a Cloth Nappies online store.
Amongst his favourite things is Zope
He's been a member of evolt.org since the very early days, a board member, a president, a writer and even contributed a modest amount of template code for the current site. Above all, he likes evolt.org to do things because it knowingly chooses to do so, rather than randomly stumbling into them. He's also one of the boys and girls who beervolts in the UK, although the arrival of small children in his life have knocked the frequency for 6.
Most likely to ask: Why would a client pay you to do that?
Least likely to ask: Why isn't that navigation frame in Flash?
