Demon Internet Ltd, the UK internet service provider owned by ScottishTelecom Plc, has attacked the UK government’s proposals for extending the Interception of Communications Act 1985 to the internet, saying the rules would place too much financial and legal liability on ISPs. In a written response to the June consultation document, Demon says the government does not seem to have understood the technical issues that arise adding the proposals are unreasonably expensive or just unrealistic.
The government, attempting to modernize outdated surveillance legislation to help police in the fight against online crime, said that ISPs should be prepared to foot the bill for adapting systems to allow easy interception of data communications. Demon, having conducted the first ISP cost analysis of the proposal, reckons it would cost it around 1m pounds ($1.6m) per year a tax of 10%-15% of network running costs to intercept raw IP data streams. Report co-author, Demon internet consultant Richard Clayton said: It is a marginal cost that is difficult to quantify. But it is a tax, and the government should just say it is a tax.
This is based on the government’s view that an ISP the size of Demon would need to be capable of intercepting one in every 500 incoming dialup connections, or one in every 1,000 leased line connections. Demon said this would mean providing 1Mbps data streams to law enforcement agencies, and points out that the equivalent law in the Netherlands only requires one tap per 10,000 lines, equivalent to less than a single 64Kbps line.
Clayton told ComputerWire that current government thinking would make it an offense if an ISP failed to have an intercept up and running within 12 hours of being served a warrant. He said: We can’t have our engineers going to jail for not doing their job fast enough. Due to that and the new tipping off offense that would be created to prevent ISP staff from warning suspects that they are being tapped, Clayton envisages staff wages rising to cover the new responsibilities. He said: The government seems to want ISPs to a have dedicated staff to deal with intercepts. A big company like BT could afford that, but an ISP the size of Demon could not.
Demon also gets hot under the collar about the Home Office’s plans to exempt smaller ISPs from the same responsibilities. [the government] is effectively providing clear guidance to criminals as to the size of supplier they should select to avoid interception.
