Swiss ISPs Must Archive E-mail For 6 Months

the_danielsan writes: "I first thought this (this ain't yellow press) would be a joke, but apparently swiss ISPs are now enforced to monitor all outgoing mails up to a period of 6 month - at their own cost! sunrise, a larger ISP, speaks of 50,000 to 100,000 CHF (that's about 31,405 to 62,810 USD according to my currency calculator) to update their systems. heise Newsticker has the same story running (both German). I can't believe this." For non-German readers, babelfish does a decent job with these articles.

Comments

Re:Curse of Socialism

[alphaseven]

Ahem, Carnivore, Echelon, DMCA, facial recognition cameras... the U.S. has been pioneering a heck of a lot more of surveilance on the public than a lot of these European countries, why do you think terrorists hang out and do their planning in Europe and Canada before heading to the U.S?

Hey, if socialism is so restrictive of freedom, how come I can smoke a joint in the Netherlands but not in the U.S?

Redefine "e-mail"

[madburn]

This move seems similar in goal to Carnivore, except it shifts the burden to the poor ISPs who have to pay the costs. I question the chain of custody issues with any "evidence", although I'm ignorant of the Swiss legal system.

Reading the articles there doesn't seem to be enough detail on what e-mail is, so I will assume it's rfc822-style traffic. The obvious way to avoid this law would then be to not use that kind of message traffic. What an opportunity for one or more of the Swiss ISPs to change the landscape of network messaging.

It's time for the existing email infrastructure to wither and die since it's been overrun by spamming and virus delivery.

Re:Simple: Plug in Feedback

[acceleriter]

That only works for monopolies or oligopolies like phone companies (pass on a corporate tax as a $2 "universal service charge" and blame it on the FCC, for example).

The first ISP to start doing this would hemmorage customers, unless it could get the others to go along--which we all know is illegal.

Re:Curse of Socialism

[Zarquon]

Money.. chocolate.. information on who owns what money.. Chocolate.. Some great skiing in the Alps.. Chocolate.. Getting rid of it's reputation as pretty much the only European nation to actually pull off being neutral for the last century.. Chocolate.