Big brother eyeing your emails

By MICHAEL FOREMAN

Internet service providers are both puzzled and appalled at the steps the Government could take to intercept emails.

The Government has yet to detail how its agencies will go about the task after anti-hacking legislation is passed, but internet providers told the Herald the methods could range from draconian to easy to evade.

Ihug managing director Nick Wood said one of the easiest interception methods was based on key words.

"They could tell us to filter off every bit of e-mail containing the words 'anarchy' or 'militant,' for example, and we could then give them a copy."

He said this method could be easily circumvented by encryption programs such as Pretty Good Privacy, which scrambled messages so they could be read only by the recipient. Such software was not in common use.

Mr Wood described the Government's proposals as draconian.

"If police required access to electronic data they should get it by obtaining a warrant similar to those required to search a house."

David Gottschalk, managing director of Albany-based provider Web Internet, said all mail servers kept records of every email in a single spool file that could simply be sent to the authorities at regular intervals.

But more active interception would also be possible via an extra mail server installed on the internet provider's premises. This would redirect certain messages to the Government.

"It would be possible to put something like a mail server on my network which could do what it wants with my traffic.

"Such a device could be administered remotely, so a list of target email addresses or key words could be easily maintained by Government agencies without requiring the cooperation or knowledge of the provider."

Mr Gottschalk said messages sent via popular email services such as Hotmail or Yahoo, which were based on overseas servers, would be harder to intercept.

These messages would require the use of software to capture the information flow directly from an individual PC, which he said would be labour-intensive.