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I meant stand.org.uk :P

Have a look at the stand this is a uk site where you can legitimately fax your MP via the internet. It works very well and I have had a number of in depth responses from my MP. (Member of Parliament - for non UK people).

I am sure that a US version if it does not exist would be very popular and should have direct links from /.

US Leads, and its European lapdog and aircraft carrier,the UK, certainly follows

Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, now on the UK statute books, which has been well documented in /. is draconian, damaging to personal freedoms, ill-conceived, and illogical in equal parts. It will kill e-commerce in the UK, drive ISPs off-shore, and boost use of foreign ISPs and GPG by UK netizens with something to hide.

The UK government has now announced that it is doing nothing about spam, and that ISPs will self-regulate on this issue.

Americans should not believe that they have the monopoly on such legislation. While we may not be the 'best' in the world at much these days, the UK still possesses a powerful blend of stupidity, arrogance and incompetence in its politicians, civil servants and their advisors that will guarantee its place in the top ten for a few decades yet.

As for the RIP act in my own country. I'm nothing short of appalled. I've written to my member of parliament but to no avail - didn't even acknowledge me.

I thought MPs had to reply to letters sent them by their constituents.

By the way, check out www.stand.org.uk and www.fipr.org

D.

Now I'm all in favour of the 'contempt of court' laws, but hang on a minute here...

Further, and more in-depth commentary can be found at Stand.org.uk for those who are interested.

Craig.

From stand.org.uk:
ISPs, do not as a rule, monitor their own users. Section 12. (1) will oblige them to invent the technology to do so, and build it into their equipment. For this act, the Home Secretary has gracefully agreed to reimburse them via a government grant.

The current Bill makes no specification as to the what this equipment will consist of.

Additionally, the Home Secretary has reserved the right to demand the placing of specific devices to monitor ISP traffic with little deliberation, and no guarantee that the nature of this monitoring will ever be publicised. We'd like to see such impositions made public.

So we don't (and maybe won't) know how the monitoring will be implemented. Some people have made guesses, but I suspect that they're inaccurate.

HH

Not only is the bill technically in-ept there are heaps of other problems with it.

Imagine they do intercept a peice of ciphertext from me, they then require I give them the key that I used to encrypt that with. Now i'm no encryption expert but afaics I have the choice to give them my public key, or just the IDEA key that PGP uses for that particular mail. In addition I could just give them the plaintext, but I fail to see quite how they can ever prove that a piece of plaintext can be linked to it's ciphered version.

As for the legal problems... if someone registers a public key in my name on a server and then starts emailling encrypted mail to me using my public key then I will be expected to supply the key or plaintext to the authorities (if they suspect i'm a lil' bit dodgy). If I fail to do that then I can get 2 years in prison. (and if I let anyone else know that I've been asked to surrender my key then I can get another 5 years).

There was a nice demonstration of this carried out by Stand in sending stuff to jack straw (the uk home secretary).

Now what if someone actually does have something illegal encrypted on their pc... by not surrendering they key you can get max 2 years of prison life... which is a nice way out for paedophiles and the likes.

Personally I think this is a complete shambols and I really hope we can stop it from becoming law in october.

I will be writing to my mp.

Another useful site is http://www.fipr.org/rip/RIPcountermeas ures.htm . No explainations required.

wrighty.

(Is it me or does the lameness filter add in spaces to long strings?)

You're falling into the trap of the Politician's Syllogism:

• Something Must Be Done
• This is something
• Therefore this must be done.

Aren't you posting from the UK ? Right now the UK has the unedifying spectacle of a government simultaneously imposing draconian anti-privacy measures in the RIP bill, yet also having their own secrets exposed by "Benji the Binman", owing to their own complete lack of understanding on basic infosec (shred your rubbish).

We already have many defences against DDoS attacks. The best one is installing Clues in the admins of bozo ISPs (not forwarding RFC1918 is a damned good start), but more robust inbound routing helps too (stateful packet inspection still isn't commonplace, yet it kills things like SYN flooding). We can fix this. Sure, It sucks today, but let the geeks work it out and we'll get the holes patched.

So what are you suggesting instead ? Modem Licences, to go with the Modem Tax rumours you recall so fondly from the Net 10 years ago. The infrastructure is flaking, there are too many cluephobes jumping on the ISP bandwagon, yet you want to start beating up on the users ! I'm sorry if AOL doesn't meet your standards of intellectual superiority (are you a Mensa member too ?), but their cash is as good as yours or mine, and they've just as much right to be here.

If I walk into my local pub and behave like a jerk I'll be thrown out. Cross the road and the same behaviour is accepted as normal; different pubs, different communities, different standards of behaviour. How is your "global net access" going to support that ? I don't want Kansas fundies telling me that evolution doesn't work, and they probably wouldn't want me offending their local ordinances either.

Don't like Grits with your Slashdot ? Lets make moderation work better. Virtual Communities are still a pretty new concept, and we're going to have to learn how to deal with the odd Mr Bungle or BeerGuy.

Personally I think an age limit of 32 is about right. Keeps off the people who don't remember uucp and real netiquette. How do you like that idea ? 8-)

As a UK-resident, I agree that it's not that good a place... how about Ireland? ISTR that the Irish government have promised not to pass an RIP-like bill, so you should be safe there...

Ok to be fair I dont know who concopted this plan but it really does appal me.

I get the very clear impression that the government dont actually have a good understanding of how the net works or how they intend to enforce this.

I suggest you take a look at The Stand who can provide a good insight into the pitfalls of this bill along with information for lobbying your MP.

What makes me sick is this is just a government ploy to appeal to the aol-makes-the-world-safe-for-kids group of parents. If the public percieve this as anything else then they will quite quickly change their minds again. And this is the same government which is tightening it's stance on drugs nationally while my local division (scotland :)) are considering decriminalisation and legalisation.

The whole thing is just a shambols but we need to make sure this doesn't go through.

These people are shutting down real businesses and costing people real money

So get a police force, not a journalist.

If you confuse journalism and policing, pretty soon everyone is playing Sherlock and no-one writes journalism any more. You still don't seem to get it -- there are often long-term issues more important than single short-term issues, even if those issues are themselves quite serious.

Here in the UK, a current topic is that of Jack Straw's RIP Bill. If you look at this one way, it's an Orwellian invasion of on-line privacy. If you present it in another, it's the "Pedophile and Terrorist Tracking Bill", which of course no right-thinking person could be against. So, is it worth sacrificing a large number of basic freedoms for a one-issue campaign, no matter how worthy ?

The way people would most commonly be caught, especially in the case of fling because of the encryption, would be to simply request something illegal, retrieve it, and then bust the admin of the machine that sent you the packets
That would be the same as busting the companies that run routers over which you received the data, and thats obviously unworkable, here in the UK HMG are really screwing things up with the RIP bill which is almost as stupid, see Stand

The UK government's Regulation of Investigatory powers (see notes on it here) has got it exactly right. It going to insist that every UK ISP fits hooks to their infrastructure to allow them to tap e-mails and web traffic, at the ISPs expense. Not only that, but they are enshrining it in law, and talking about it publicly !

Now that's open government for you....... It dosen't solve the problem of your diminishing privacy, but, being British, they are nice enough and fair enough to tell you about it first.

(.....Sh*t - where is the HTML irony tag when you need it ....)

They do a good job of opposing the RIP bill.

http://www.stand.org.uk/

A more comprehensive website about the RIP Bill is at Stand's site

Bluetooth connection to the computer that is physically built into the wall, and plastered over and then wallpapered over, and nobody could ever find your system. Ever.

I prefer the soup can idea though, although you could fit 2 or 3 of these devices into a large baked bean can. If the connector was on the bottom, then the ethernet can run *inside* the shelf itself, and then into the computer that is built into the wall.

Great place to store all those highly illegal porn piccies, eh? (only applicable to politicians). With the RIP bill in the uk (Stand against this), this is a great way to hide all that information.

On the other hand, any government that tries to pass the RIP bill really doesn't have it's citizens (ok, subjects) best interests at heart.

Phillip.

There are a couple of reasons for the EU wanting to drop encryption restrictions and the US being pissed off:

• The EU parliament commissioned Duncan Campbell to produce the
  STOA report which details the Echelon project and the fact the NSA sells commercial secrets to enable US companies to steal massive global contracts from under the noses of their EU counterparts. The French were so affected by the revelations they switched from the most draconian encryption policy (they banned all encryption, even by their own citizens) to the most liberal (instant raising to 128-bit with a view to dropping limits asap).
  
• The scandals involving both Lotus Notes (confirmed) and Microsoft (allegedly) deliberately leaking private keys to the NSA. The Swedish government was publicly outraged as their MPs use Lotus Notes for confidential communications. There is now an aura of distrust around US 'blessed' software and we will see a push towards Open Source software as well as a drop on encryption export restrictions.
  

So is the future looking rosier? Not for us in the UK, which is one of the most oppresive governments in the world. Take a look at the watered down RIP bill (you can only imagine what the original bill was like, hint: key escrow). For the rest of Europe, will they convince businesses to spend effort and manpower in creating secure systems as opposed to buying cheap, painless, out-of-the-box NSA friendly software? A nice but distant dream.

Phillip.

• Two years in prison for failing to reveal your password. That you may have mislaid or forgotten it will not be a defence.
• if, having suffered a miscarriage of justice under RIP, you decide to complain in public, you can be imprisoned for a further five years

Thats like saying a search warrant compells you to hand over documents so you need to have that letter you threw away last year. If you don't have it they wont throw you in jail

it seems the U.K. will probably win [a race to see who becomes a police state first]

Our government is doing its best to make the UK the best place in the world to host e-commerce (or so they tell me). Has anyone seen any evidence of this ?

So far I've seen the IR35 tax changes making freelance contractors extinct, or driving us abroad. We have Jack Straw's bill to make us surrender passwords, for the strong crypto they don't want us to have anyway. Now we have a tax on ISPs to not only spy on us, but to make us pay for doing so !

Feel like complaining ? Take a look at http://www.stand.org.uk/ and join in

The RIP Bill is certainly one of the most controversial bills I've noticed in my time. For those who can be bothered reading them:

Stand.org.uk
Bills before Parliament currently

What is scary to notice is this particular set of bills, all called to the Houses of Commons (and Lords) by Mr Jack Straw (the man who seems to be getting the blame for the RIP bill):

• Regulation of Investigatory Powers [RIP]
• Terrorism Bill [T]
• Freedom of Information Act [FoI]
• Electronic Communications Bill [EC]
• Copyright and Trademarks Bill [CaT]

The [T] bill grants full powers to the police, without warrant, without "Innocent Until Proven Guilty" if they suspect you of terrorism. Terrorism now can include environmental and anti-capitalist demonstrations.

The [CaT] bill makes owning software which removes copy-protection illegal (I have no idea what this would mean to anyone with a copy of the source for DeCSS, which could be seen as a form of copy-protection).

[RIP] bill has enough people ranting about it to be ridiculous. Some people think that the government can't afford to enforce this bill (estimates of tens of millions for a year), and that the bill won't be passed. That said, the bill is already at the stage where it needs a lawyer to write a formal document to get changes made to it. I guess we'll know the truth around 4th October (unless the date has changed) which is when the bill is to come into action.

Given that list of bills that are being changed, and the changes that have come to light, it seems as though the UK government is heading towards a semi-police-state sort of arrangement? Check out this site for their latest ideas on censorship:

School Internet Access

What I think has to be borne in mind is that most countries (all of them that I've come across) do not give you "Privacy" as a right. All legal systems seem to rely on the fact that the citizens will be open about certain things - namely they will give the police access to their homes when presented with a warrant. In many ways, the RIP bill is fair in asking for you to hand over your keys. However, what are not fair, or well thought through, are the consequences for not doing so.

Stand's website already mentions one major problem with the "Give us your keys or go to jail" mentality - any hard-core terrorist group would rather go to jail for 2 years for obstruction of justice than face life imprisonment because their encrypted mails had their keys given out. This applies to paedophilia (another of the crimes that the government is trying to tighten up on), where the Department of Trade and Industry provided a "brochure" on cryptography/legislation in the UK:

Encryption and Law Enforcement

To me, that brochure summarises the way the government believes it can (and actually manages to) control its people - for the most part, the general population in this country is willing to believe that paedophilia == bad, paedophiles use crypto, terrorists use crypto, ergo: crypto == bad and we must do everything in our power to make sure that the Finally, I see two or three ways around these problems (which seem to be caused by men-in-suits who have no idea about what they are legislating):

• Ignore it - it doesn't bother me, I'll just bury my head in the sand and wonder why I'm in jail for two years when I lose a key.
• Emigrate - question is, where to? How many other countries have laws which could be construed as "backwards" in other respects? Canada seems to have sane crypto laws, but is going crazy about MP3 and copyright legislations. America seems to be following suit. Germany allows ISP's to be sued for content that isn't there own (old slashdot story - don't quote me on it!). France used to deny existance of RSA...
• Fight fire with fire - this is the solution that I believe I shall adopt. As part of my final year in University, I have to do a project. As my project I've chosen to do something a bit like the Eternity service, but with a twist: anonymity. For the first time, freedom of speech can only be stopped by a government if they cut off the internet. And if they do that, businesses will leave straight away. Granted, it doesn't get around [RIP], unless you only use session keys and destroy them after the session, but it does finally give us something that few governments are willing to: freedom of speech and privacy (in the sense that no matter who snoops our connections, they still can't prove we sent a message, let alone prove we have the key).
• Clue up - this is for anyone who has an interest in law. Clue the government up, and the best way to do that is to become the government. This is meant to be a democracy, after all, so should your views be supported, you will be able to get into power and make our voices heard. If the tide of opinion is against you (as it may well be, especially in the UK), then the only thing you can do is to accept that this is how democracy works, and maybe this is the wrong type of government system for you.

Well, that's my four-quid's worth.

-- Maz

See stand.org.uk for more details.

Basically, somebody can send you an encrypted e-mail, for which you have no key, they can dispose of the key, but you can go to jail for having this encrypted data. Finland here I come...

The sad thing is that this isn't going to stop the people its meant to catch. The "bad guys" will resort to other means of communication, steganography being one obvious choice, I'm sure they will find others...

Hopefully the European Court of Human Rights will stop it ever happening, but some poor guy is going to have to go through hell for them to get involved.

Of course there's major potential for abuse - but the same is true of existing UK legislation. The Prevention of Terrorism Act allows suspected terrorists to be imprisoned without being charged and denies them the right to trial by jury. The Criminal Justice Act basically provides a series of excuses which can be used to arrest demonstrators, protestors, ravers, gypsies, and other second-class citizes.

("Britain" and "British" are spelt with ONE t, BTW)

In the UK, the government will get there first.

The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act will treat ISPs as telcos. It will require them to put the monitoring apparatus in place, so the government can watch what its taxpayers are doing. More detailed discussion of this hideous legislation can be found at the STAND site.

Once the telcos, sorry, ISPs put this apparatus in place, thy might as well get some return on their 'investment' by gleaning marketing info about their customers in passing.

Read the controversial segment of the RIP text (@ stand) and see if that doesn't sooo nicely tie in with ECHELON (a system which no doubt gives Jack Straw many a wet dream)... First they spy on you, then when you use any form of crypto they take this as "evidence" that you're doing something wrong, and buttfuck you either way.

Any other UKnerds up for a march on London?

Closest thing I can think of off hand would be Stand - however they're more about gaining sane crypto and e-commerce legislation.

The worrything thing is that I live in the UK and work for one of the *big* ISPs and I can't think of anything ...

1) The RIP bill which is going through parliament at the moment which would basically allow the authorities to demand anybody's security keys and allow covert monitoring of ISPs.

2) The new tax laws which came into effect this month (IR35), which basically mean that self-employed programmers pay more tax than any other industry (~ 50% of their _company's income).

3) The recent demon et al. decisions, which hold ISP's responsible for defamatory material on their servers.

Quite how the government sees the situation as inviting to e-commerce companies is beyond me.

This guy should have a look at Stand.org.uk.
I for one have done my bit - I faxed (GPG-signed :) my MP, who forwarded it to Jack Straw, who sent me a letter (ick, snailmail) back saying that it's "to track down criminals" and that I should go read the text of the RIP bill myself rather than rely on commentary.
What he does not say is that for the sake of a few stupid criminals he's locking up the rest of the country - there can never be a Verisign in the UK if the government can demand keys/decryption. So much for e-commerce, then. Oh, and I note a distinct absence of open letter with point-by-point rebuttal of any of the "commentary", on Stand.
So IOW, the UK is just as bad (read "braindead") as one of these "communist countries" in the EPIC report.

Make of that what you may, but like hell will I be respecting politicians...
~Tim
--
.|` Clouds cross the black moonlight,

We have our own bill of weirdness here, the RIP bill which is designed to allow aceess by the authorities of encrypted data - it's supposed to help catch rapists and child molesters etc. The out come of it is such that they can force you to hand over your keys etc or they will chuck you in gaol for a coupel of years - if you've lost or forgotten the key, you have to prove it (how does one prove they've forgotten a key?).

Problem here is that 2 years is less that a sentence for child molesting etc.......

For more information, go here

Erm, my point was that this bill will hopefully be ruled against the EU human rights acts :)

So there you go - it's not just the States that puts out stupid, short sighted bills!!

Troc

1. dedicate enough skilled staff to review each and every such demand, and judge whether it is justified (keeping in mind that a wrong decision could be very costly), or

2. immediately cave in and remove any posting on demand (this will also require staff effort, but requires less skill). This would, of course, reduce the level of discourse to that of a corporate press release.

What with this and Labour's Regulation of Investigatory Powers Bill (putting encryption users at risk of prosecution if they lose their keys), Britain looks to be dropping out of the Internet race. Sad, really.

If you live in the UK, do listen to PigleT and visit www.stand.org.uk to protest about the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Bill 2000, which is slated to become law in October. While it too late to stop that now (the Bill's second reading took place on March 6th), a constant stream of intelligent criticism can only serve to educate your probably slightly clueless MP. And remember - as a voter, you will be listened to.

Indeed, I recently received a full reply from my MP, former actress Glenda Jackson. While I disagree with some of what she said, she did at least try to adress the issues I raised. Each time she has to do this, she is forced to think about the issue a bit more, and is a bit more likely to realise that parts of the Bill are intrinsically flawed.

PS If anyone is interested in the text of the reply I will post it.

If you live in the UK, do listen to PigleT and visit www.stand.org.uk to protest about the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Bill 2000, which is slated to become law in October. While it too late to stop that now (the Bill's second reading took place on March 6th), a constant stream of intelligent criticism can only serve to educate your probably slightly clueless MP. And remember - as a voter, you will be listened to.

Indeed, I recently received a full reply from my MP, former actress Glenda Jackson. While I disagree with some of what she said, she did at least try to adress the issues I raised. Each time she has to do this, she is forced to think about the issue a bit more, and is a bit more likely to realise that parts of the Bill are intrinsically flawed.

PS If anyone is interested in the text of the reply I will post it.

Thank heavens I'm not with Demon any longer!

No good comes from pandering to folks who can't cope with "defammatory postings" at all. You should be allowed to flame away to your heart's content, IMNSHO - if you don't like being flamed, don't go out of your way to deserve it!

While you're at it, pay a visit to Stand.org.uk, and if you're UK-based send your MP a fax (preferably GPG-signed, too).

How do we go about getting the government out of the 'Net once and for all? Anyone got a small island to spare?
~Tim
--
.|` Clouds cross the black moonlight,

Do we need to "fill positions", or do we just need some databases and perl scripts? Take a visit to stand.org.uk to see what the UK Geeks have constructed for lobbying; neat "fax your Member of Parliament" feature....

In the interests of saving SlashDot readers time, Here is a brief pro-forma letter for you to cut and paste into the Fax a MP box. Fill in the relevant fields and off you go.

Dear [MPname],

As a [Constituant] constituant I am writing to you to object to the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Bill.

I feel you should be made aware of the ramifications of this bill, and its implications for [Constituant] citizens.

In a nutshell:-

Internet Service Providers will be classed as telecoms operators and as such the Home Secretary can demand taps on ISP traffic with little deliberation -- and without publicity.

You can be jailed for not handing over decryption keys, even if the police can't prove that you ever had those keys in the first place. There is no jury for this procedure and the appeal can only be made to a closed committee to which the plaintif would have no access. You are effectivly guilty until proven innocent, with the burden of proof lying upon you!

As I am sure you can see, this bill poses a serious threat to personal privacy and rights.

I would be pleased to discuss this further with you. You can contact me in any of the ways detailed below.

I look forward to hearing from you soon,

[Yourname]

[Your contact details]

first off every UK /.er must adopt thier MP!!!
write to him/her at least once!!
get your freinds etc to do the same.
one of them will break they will see the error of their ways, everythink they have said about eBritain is bullshite unless they repele this law.
the law is unjust and bad for business as well as the consumer, see stand.org.uk for further proof on this.
DO NOT take this lightly, goverments are made and broken by direct action, everybody distrubute DeCSS on the day the law comes into effect, they will be breaking their own law if they try to protect the key! FIGHT IT we have the power.
sparkes

*** www.linuxuk.co.uk relaunches 1 Mar 2000 ***

first off every UK /.er must adopt thier MP!!!
write to him/her at least once!!
get your freinds etc to do the same.
one of them will break they will see the error of their ways, everythink they have said about eBritain is bullshite unless they repele this law.
the law is unjust and bad for business as well as the consumer, see stand.org.uk for further proof on this.
DO NOT take this lightly, goverments are made and broken by direct action, everybody distrubute DeCSS on the day the law comes into effect, they will be breaking their own law if they try to protect the key! FIGHT IT we have the power.
sparkes

*** www.linuxuk.co.uk relaunches 1 Mar 2000 ***

If this has now received Royal Assent, then Jack Straw (Home Secretary) is in BIG trouble. Potentially at least. I recommend a look at this neat little mantrap that the chaps and chapesses at stand.org.uk have arranged for the lovely Jack. He has an encrypted message. A solicitor has attested to the fact that it is pertinent to a real crime. The same solicitor has seen the only copy of the cleartext, and the only copy of the key (on a floppy), destroyed.

Now Jack has the message, and it's provably relevant to a crime, he's liable to 2 years in one of his own jails should the police choose to investigate (shame they won't...)

Very elegant.

TomV

Since when has the uk government listened to the eu, or anyother entity that disagrees with it's position.
the only way to fight it is to adopt your mp's until one of the buggers wakes up and relises all the gumpf they have spouted about e this and e that is crap if encryption is weakened in anyway
sparkes

*** www.linuxuk.co.uk relaunches 1 Mar 2000 ***

Sorry to follow up to my own post, but I found the link: http://www.stand.org.uk/

Look at http://www.stand.org.uk/ - this is an important site.

They show how to get Jack Straw (important government chap in the UK) guilty of committing a crime. That is, they encrypted a confession to an actual (undisclosed) crime, destroyed the key, and sent him the encrypted data. Jack Straw is now in possession of some information that would pressumably be of interest to the police, but he is unable to provide the decryption key (because he never had it in the first place), but, ofcourse, as many people are pointing out, how do you prove you don't have the key...

While the example of the above site is, considering the circumstances, a fairly light-heated example, consider this: lots of politicans/business people (or anyone, really) are accussed, and investigated, of serious crimes regularly. How easy will it become to provide encrypted data to the person under investigation, without their knowledge, and then inform the police that that person is in possession of encrypted data that may (or may not? who can tell?) be of interest to their investigations. Police find data, ask for key, person is flung in jail.

Ooops.

I really hope Mark Thomas can squeeze a show in about this before the current season ends - I believe the shows are still being taped. (Mark Thomas is similar to Michael Moore, for you US people - only much, much better at what he does.)

...j

The post above is really informative, if a little brief. Stand allows you adopt your MP a you get a little banner with the MP's invarablly ugly mug on your web site with a link to your MP's. If every UK /.er was to adopt thier MP it really would make a difference. follow this link to the adoption process. it is a little hard to find on the site, everybody adopt their MP's please. sparkes

*** www.linuxuk.co.uk relaunches 1 Mar 2000 ***

The UK proposal seems so totally screwed. What happens if someone sends a person (like an MP?) encrypted mail that he's NEVER had a key to decrypt. Does that mean unless he can PROVE he never had a key to decrypt email, he can go to jail if he fails to turn over something he never had and has no way of proving? How in hell is one suppossed to prove THAT?

Time to doubly-encrypt things, I think. Then the real message underneath... is also meaningless! Seriously, the threats to e-commerce in the UK are extremely high; if I can't trust someone's web server because the government will require them to decrypt stuff, it's just as bad as everything having a hidden backdoor key in it too. Everyone in the UK should sign up with Stand and send a letter to their MP immediately, IMNSHO.

If you've not seen it, check out stand.org.uk, they have a whole site on this issue, with the arguments very clearly explained.

STAND has been campaigning against this for a while now.

The brilliant STAND campaign against draconian encryption laws came across the same problem. MPs' email addresses aren't public domain; most of them bounce, and their offices won't give out contact details to non-constituents.

There's a real schism in the Government's attitude to technology here. Tony Blair makes well-publicised speeches about Britain leading the m-commerce revolution (m for mobile), and his ministers have pagers, mobile phones and laptops linked to a central database of stats and policy details, but most MPs have understaffed offices, no desk space, and no direct access via email, in spite of the fact that most of them spend their weeks miles away from their constituencies.

It's about time that politicians woke up to the opportunities of the Net. Of all the parties, only the minority Liberal Democrats have attempted to harness the technology, which is in keeping with their radical approach.