Fun fact of the day: Network routers are illegal in Japan There's no doubt that the internet has caused massive shakeups in laws across the globe, but in Japan the law has an unusual kink: internet routers are technically illegal. Except they're not. Because under a very Japanese rule, the ability of electronic equipment to read a packet header both violates the law and "seems not …
As such, Ogawa explains, it "violates the law, but seems not illegal."
According to F Scott Fitzgerald, "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function."
OK, I guess that explains Japan and its growth since WWII, but under the same theory, does this mean a certain Boris look-alike running for POTUS has a first-rate intelligence?
I'm neither a comp tech or a lawyer but isn't this better resolved or justified as part of "consent" rather than just "routine activity"? The user implicitly consents to the router and other network equipment reading the parts of the message necessary to achieve his aim of transmitting said message to its recipient.
It seems not very different from the mail address on your paper mail - every time you mail something you are letting the post office know you are sending something to a particular address (and further inferences can be made from the mass and dimensions of the package), and no one seems to think whether that's a violation of privacy.
"It seems not very different from the mail address on your paper mail - every time you mail something you are letting the post office know you are sending something to a particular address (and further inferences can be made from the mass and dimensions of the package), and no one seems to think whether that's a violation of privacy."
But then the Post Office would have to enter all of the details on each and every item posted into a computer, thus causing unacceptable delays in delivery ... err ... wait a minute ...
Japan is wonderful for this. So many things there are technically illegal yet done by the entire population. If they ever want to arrest and detain someone, which they can do for up to around 25 days, without access to a lawyer (or food and water, according to some amnesty international reports, explaining their 99% conviction rate and history of forced confession), they can just decide to invoke a law like this.
Technically it's illegal to cycle on the pavement there, yet everybody does.
Just wait until some activist says something inappropriate. And you thought CCTV here in blighty was bad.
Glory to Arstotzka.
It's not unusual in the UK for a law to be widely ignored, and almost never upheld.
For example, in Bristol the police don't care about recreational weed smoking. As long as you're not dealing, or trying to blow the smoke in someone's face they'll pretty much ignore you.
See also: motorway speed limits, bikes on pavements, street drinking and lying to the electorate through the medium of slogans on buses.
It does seem to be a US idea that laws are fixed and immutable and that there should never be any leeway in interpretation.
Reading routing information, especially by the device that is performing said routing, is not the same as reading the communication, any more than the telephone company listening to the line for DTMF tones is listening in on the call. Or, as has been stated above, looking at an address is not the same as opening the envelope and reading the letter within.
On the other hand, it is probably good that this lack of clarity exists, for I'm sure that if the same situation was "clarified" in the UK (and other western countries), it would be done so in a way that tacitly sanctions deep packet inspection, because, you know, shitty laws and mission creep...
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