Slashdot Mirror
UK Email Retention Plan Technically Flawed
deltaromeo points out a BBC report calling the UK's law requiring ISPs to retain users' emails for at least a year an "attack on rights." The article also points out financial and technical flaws with the plan (which we first discussed in October). TechCrunch goes a step further, detailing how it conflicts with other governmental goals. Quoting:
"...with one hand the government seeks to lock down the British Internet with an iron fist, while at the same time telling us it is boosting innovation and business online. It is quite clearly blind to the fact that one affects the other. Are we also expected to think that the consumers using online services are not going to be put off from engaging in the boom of 'sharing' that Web 2.0 created? How would you feel if every Twitter you sent, every video uploaded, was to be stored and held against you in perpetuity? That may not happen, but the mere suggestion that your email is no longer private would serve to kill the UK population's relish for new media stone dead, and with it large swathes of the developing online economy."
Too late. I already do that sort of. I have a server that I maintain and do daily backups to a gmail account automatically. I use GPG to encrypt the data in 15MB segments. I have it sent to a gmail account daily. Gmail stores up to 8GB (I think/about) and that gives me about 30 days worth of backups at any given moment. When Gmail gets the email they are sent to trash. This way after about 30 days the old stuff gets deleted automatically. It's already working pretty well. I'm in the process of using it right now to restore my server.