meta data

[Viper]

Hi
In my country  the government have introduced a policy where they plan to retain meta data from everyone for two years. What  problems does that cause for p2p sharing and is there any thing one can do to get around this problem. It's easy to do on the net. Personnally, I think this is gross invasion of privacy.

Thank you

[silicon_toad2000]

yeah im in the same boat

i don't know how they are exactly going to implement this, it's going to be a pain in the buttocks for any providers. The bit that concerns me is the list below says they are going to keep to and from address of emails, chat room visitor logs, chat aliases, name of the application used online.

This means they will be pulling packets apart and keeping the data inside also. Any packets which aren't encrypted may be logged. Some packets which are encrypted may also be logged if the government has the protocol. e.g. IIRC Microsoft provided the protocols for skype to law enforcement bodies.

This doesn't specify p2p or any metadata from p2p traffic. So on the face of it, it will not affect p2p sharing. However, often, machinery put in place for whatever reasons is soon leveraged by the cartel. If chat aliases are being logged it means they are looking inside packets and logging that data. I think it would be easy enough to log other packets than those specified once the machinery is in place. for example if you download puppylinux on winmx, your provider can access the file name from inside the traffic. I don't know what the torrent protocol is, but since it is well known it could be the case that the provider may be able to log that you have initiated a download of puppylinux from a torrent swarm.
In my country once the machinery is in place, however the initial proposal is worded, it can soon easily be taken up for other reasons with a simple members bill through the parliament.

http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/digital-life-news/what-is-metadata-and-should-you-worry-if-yours-is-stored-by-law-20140806-100zae.html

Metadata is widely understood by government officials to include the following :

Telephone numbers
The time and length of phone calls
The internet protocol addresses (IP addresses) of computers from which messages are received or sent
Location of parties making phone calls
To and from email addresses on emails
Logs of visitors to chat rooms online
Status of chat sites – whether they are active and how many people are participating
Chat aliases or identifiers (the name a person uses in a chat room online)
Start and finish times of internet sessions
The location of an individual involved in communications
The name of the application someone uses online and when, where and for how long used

Metadata is not:

The content of a communication such as a phone call or an email
The subject line of an email
The content of the discussion in a chat room online (what is said)
The content of a mobile phone text message (SMS)
Attachments to emails such as photos or videos
Web camera transmissions
Websites a person visits (i.e. browsing histories)
The name of a website a person visits
The substance of a person's social media posts