On Thu, 4 Feb 1999, Esther Dyson wrote:
> Jim, any comments on http://www.wired.com/news/news/politics/story/17678.html?
My understanding of the situation is this:
The police in the UK asked the Internet industry to set up a joint
police and ISP committee to give ACPO (the Association of Chief Police
Officers, I think) technical advice on how to deal with crime over the
Internet. This is the ACPO/ISP committee.
There are about 50 police forces in this country. ACPO is a semi-
official body for coordinating their activities and educating the
various forces.
The police sent invitations to meetings of this "secret" committee to
a very wide list, presumably to every address they had. As far as I
know, every ISP and every Internet body in the UK got an invitation;
ISPA UK got one and we (VBCnet) received two. Three meetings were held,
one in Edinburgh to coincide with the overlapped LINX and RIPE meetings
being held there.
An organisation called Cyber-Rights & Cyber-Liberties (UK) decided that
this was the ACPO/ISPA committee (possibly just misreading the name of
the committee) and have sent out press releases making claims that ISPA
and the police are making "secret deals" of one sort or another.
In fact the members of the committee represented a number of ISPs. David
Kennedy, a Department of Trade and Industry civil servant on secondment
to ISPA, attended committee meetings on behalf of ISPA UK and helped
write a draft report.
To the best of my recollection, David was the only person from ISPA
itself who attended the supposedly secret ACPO/ISP meetings. Please
remember he is a DTI civil servant who is very knowledgeable on Internet
matters.
ISPA has from its beginnings spent a great deal of time educating UK
government bodies on the Internet. We have been very successful in
kiling many ill-conceived government programs before they made it into
law. We helped kill the bit tax, for example. And we helped stop
plans to force ISPs to examine each and every Usenet news article for
illegal content by explaining to the DTI and the Metropolitan Police
(the Met) how impossible this is from a technical point of view.
Our involvement with ACPO is a continuation of this educational program.
The police have very little understanding of the Internet. A year or so
ago, the Met's child porn unit consisted of five people with no
connection to the Internet. There is a real problem with child pornography
over the Net. The police have no intelligent way of addressing it without
cooperation from industry.
The UK Internet industry could pursue a policy of absolute non-cooperation.
If we did so, the tabloid press and Parliament would be up in arms, and
very shortly a strict and doubtless poorly-designed regulatory regime
would be imposed on us.
In fact, ISPs have no problem with educating the police and other
government bodies on how the Internet works. We want Parliament to
have a clear understanding of the Net before they write laws. We
want government departments to be able to design regulations sensibly.
And we want the police to know what is practical when they set out to
enforce the law. Perhaps I should mention that the relationship
between the police and the public is less adversarial in the UK than
in most countries.
By the way, this educational program works both ways. The question of
what rights the police have has been discussed repeatedly on the
ISPA members email list. Most ISPs have no objection to cooperating
with the police, but refuse to divulge information without a proper
warrant.
On the particular question of child porn, there are very few ISPs,
if any, that object to cooperating with the police.
As regards Cyber-Rights & Cyber-Liberties, it may be relevant to point
out that a few months ago they demanded that ISPA require its member ISPs
to send CR-CL literature to all of their customers. We declined, saying
that this would be regarded as spam. They have something of a grudge
against us in consequence. CR-CL appears to be two individuals with a
desire to make a name for themselves; I believe that they are students
at Leeds University.
As regards any possible comparision with the ICANN board, (a) anyone
in the UK with an interest in the Internet can join ISPA, (b) any member
can stand for the ISPA board, (c) all Council [board] minutes are
published shortly after meetings, and (d) the membership can
at any time remove directors at a general meeting upon 21 days notice.
--
Jim Dixon Managing Director
VBCnet GB Ltd http://www.vbc.net tel +44 117 929 1316
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Member of Council Telecommunications Director
Internet Services Providers Association EuroISPA EEIG
http://www.ispa.org.uk http://www.euroispa.org
tel +44 171 976 0679 tel +32 2 503 22 65
