[pp.int.general] LOPPSI to be discussed in february

[W Tovey]

I'm not sure how relevant this is, but there was a rather worrying quote 
I noticed from the debate in the UK's House of Lords yesterday that 
seemed to be talking about the government here implementing something 
similar. During the debate on the Digital Economy Bill (an impressively 
evil piece of legislation itself) there was a discussion about how 
internet subscribers could protect themselves and their systems against 
third parties downloading copyrighted material through them (some of the 
Lords seem under the impression that wi-fi systems can be perfectly 
secure and that you can easily add a blacklist for copyrighted material 
sites to your home network... but anyways). The following was mentioned:

    Something else that the Government are apparently contemplating,
    which I approve of, is a service whereby people could have their own
    computer checked to demonstrate that it had not been used to
    download illegal material, as a quick and convenient means of
    defence. I presume that this would be done remotely, with people
    allowing some government-authorised contractor to have remote access
    to their hard disc and run a checking programme, at the end of which
    they would say, "Tick. This computer has not been used for that
    purpose and the necessary protections have been installed on it". -
    Lord Lucas
    [http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200910/ldhansrd/text/100118-0005.htm
    second paragraph]

It strikes me that this could imply that the UK government is not only 
looking into software to scan citizen's computers to check it is 
'secure' and contains no copyrighted material (no idea how that would 
even work - how can it distinguish licensed .mp3s downloaded from Amazon 
Mp3 etc. from unlicensed ones?) but they are also hoping to be able to 
do this remotely; personally I don't want anyone (including myself) 
accessing my entire hard drive from a remote location (particularly with 
my ISP implementing deep packet inspection) and certainly not the 
government (never mind a 'government-authorised contractor' [government 
language for a company overpaid and under-qualified but with close ties 
to certain senior figures]. Obviously we in the UK will do what we can 
to fight such legislation (as we are doing with the DEB) but having 
something similar put in place elsewhere would certainly not help.

-Will Tovey

Rackham wrote:
> Hello all
>
> In France the LOPPSI text is set on the National Assembly agenda for the 9th to 11th of february. Amendments can be proposed till saturday 23rd of january.
>
> Denis
> NO DADVSI - NO HADOPI - NO LOPPSI
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