At 07:23 morn 10/11/02 +0530, SSB wrote:
Legality issue : Not only is it legal for vsnl to run dumb or intellegent antivirus scanner software at the sever, but the current law also allows them and the government agencies to read any email comming through the sever, as a part of "security" measures.
The govt. agencies, I have not doubt, will scan/tap/eavesdrop with or without permission. But I would like to know how VSNL gets the legal right. If they do have a legal right then this is an issue which we have to bring up. It is absolutely unethical to scan private messages. The virus is the problem of the users, not VSNL.
Remeber, even in a privacy concerned place like usa, the government runs software like carnivore, which scanns every email going through the usa internet backbone and use it for intellegency and counter-intellegency matters.
Please! The FBI & NSA & the CIA and for that matter all "agencies" worldwide to a /lot/ of cloak & dagger stuff. "Legal" issues, I am convinced, do not matter to them. VSNL does /not/ fall into that category. What you are talking about is analogous to MTNL taping phones. MTNL does not tap phones - it facilitates the "agencies" in doing so.
quasi