Important Paper: The Internet is blurring the content/metadata distinction into meaninglessnes
It's Too Complicated: The Technological Implications of Ip-Based Communications on Content/Non-Content Distinctions and the Third Party Doctrine Steven M. Bellovin / Matt Blaze / Susan Landau / Stephanie K. Pell http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2791646 For more than forty years, electronic surveillance law in the United States developed under constitutional and statutory regimes that, given the technology of the day, distinguished content from metadata with ease and certainty. The stability of these legal regimes and the distinctions they facilitated was enabled by the relative stability of these types of data in the traditional telephone network and their obviousness to users. But what happens to these legal frameworks when they confront the Internet? The Internet's complex architecture creates a communication environment where any given individual unit of data may change its status--from content to non-content or visa-versa--as it progresses Internet's layered network stack while traveling from sender to recipient. The unstable, transient status of data traversing the Internet is compounded by the fact that the content or non-content status of any individual unit of data may also depend upon where in the network that unit resides when the question is asked. - - - --Lauren-- Lauren Weinstein ([email protected]): http://www.vortex.com/lauren Founder: - Network Neutrality Squad: http://www.nnsquad.org - PRIVACY Forum: http://www.vortex.com/privacy-info Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility: http://www.pfir.org/pfir-info Member: ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com Google+: http://google.com/+LaurenWeinstein Twitter: http://twitter.com/laurenweinstein Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 / Skype: vortex.com I have consulted to Google, but I am not currently doing so -- my opinions expressed here are mine alone. _______________________________________________ pfir mailing list http://lists.pfir.org/mailman/listinfo/pfir
