Re: Hate Email and how to combat it outside the U.S.?

[Jan Meijer <]

> In the EU [I was tempted to say "in civilized countries"] there is a law
> preventing people from just handing out personal data to all and sundry.
> Many of the bad practices seen in the USA (and this arguably includes
> spamming individuals) are illegal in this country. Almost certainly the
> host of the service is correct: they would be committing an offence if they
> handed out such information without a court order. I know that I would be
> in the same situation.

In the Netherlands it is not only an issue of privacy legislation, the law
on computercrimes and the telecommunications act are also involved.  I do
not know the current state of implementing our new computercrime act, but it
is supposed to let email have the same protection as snailmail.  I'm in the
process of digging up the current status of implementation

Another background story is the case of Dutch state against the Dutch
provider Xs4all (and in return Xs4all sue-ed the Dutch government) in which
xs4all refused to tap the datastreams of one of their customers without a
court order.  The return case was about xs4all claiming the Dutch policy
were active members of a criminal organisation as they clearly were trying
to do something in the "virtual world" that is illegal in the "real world". 
I don't think both cases have finished yet...

But here you have it, the test-trial and the dilemma the anonimize site
faces.

Jan Meijer
SURFnet Services & Support
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