ALOIS and data retention

["Marcus Holthaus (IMSEC)" <Ma...@imsec.ch>]

Hi all

In my lightning talk at 27c3 I said some lines regarding data retention, more
or less like this:
Currently there is much talk about data retention, However, most of us do not
even now what loggable events they produce themselves. So one possible use of
ALOIS would be to set up your own personal log management engine to get
awareness on what logs you produce.
Furthermore I said (and had an item on my slides) indicating that ALOIS is a
dual-use tool.

Let me make clear that in my opinion, ALOIS is just a tool, and neither an
activity to prevent government data retention, nor one to further it. It is
politically neutral. I think I came over like this in the talk,

I think these statements should be put onto the web page. I propose this text:
"ALOIS and data retention
ALOIS is a great tool to collect and analyze logs. As a scalable open source
tool it may be used in a personal environment to create a log of personal
activities in much the same way as a state data retention would collect logs.
It could therefore be used for personal awareness regarding what could and
would be retained. However, not all of what state data retention would
collect, is currently available to ALOIS. Most prominently, the mobile phone
roaming data is only available on the mobile phones themselves, and although
these devices are in the user's hand, getting that data to be transferred to
ALOIS is as of yet not possible. There is work to be done on the mobile phone
side to allow that.
On the other hand, ALOIS is a dual-use tool and could be used in state data
retention environments, As it was not intended to be used this way, as it
contains functionality way beyond the collection for retention purposes and as
it probably does not (yet) scale well enough for dumping massive data amounts,
its use as a state data retention tool is unprobable and no such cases are
known. However, it is open source software and may be put to any use.
"

-- 

-- Dr. Marcus Holthaus
-- IMSEC GmbH, +41 41 780 00 11, Fax +41 41 780 00 21
-- Sonnhaldenstrasse 87, CH 6331 Hünenberg
-- Please Use OpenPGP key FDBD17F2 to encrypt your mail to me.

Re: ALOIS and data retention

[Urs Lerch <ma...@ulerch.net>]

Hi Marcus

Thanks for the input. I'll add this as soon as possible to our website.

Best,
Urs


Am Montag, den 03.01.2011, 11:33 +0100 schrieb Marcus Holthaus (IMSEC):
> Hi all
> 
> In my lightning talk at 27c3 I said some lines regarding data retention, more
> or less like this:
> Currently there is much talk about data retention, However, most of us do not
> even now what loggable events they produce themselves. So one possible use of
> ALOIS would be to set up your own personal log management engine to get
> awareness on what logs you produce.
> Furthermore I said (and had an item on my slides) indicating that ALOIS is a
> dual-use tool.
> 
> Let me make clear that in my opinion, ALOIS is just a tool, and neither an
> activity to prevent government data retention, nor one to further it. It is
> politically neutral. I think I came over like this in the talk,
> 
> I think these statements should be put onto the web page. I propose this text:
> "ALOIS and data retention
> ALOIS is a great tool to collect and analyze logs. As a scalable open source
> tool it may be used in a personal environment to create a log of personal
> activities in much the same way as a state data retention would collect logs.
> It could therefore be used for personal awareness regarding what could and
> would be retained. However, not all of what state data retention would
> collect, is currently available to ALOIS. Most prominently, the mobile phone
> roaming data is only available on the mobile phones themselves, and although
> these devices are in the user's hand, getting that data to be transferred to
> ALOIS is as of yet not possible. There is work to be done on the mobile phone
> side to allow that.
> On the other hand, ALOIS is a dual-use tool and could be used in state data
> retention environments, As it was not intended to be used this way, as it
> contains functionality way beyond the collection for retention purposes and as
> it probably does not (yet) scale well enough for dumping massive data amounts,
> its use as a state data retention tool is unprobable and no such cases are
> known. However, it is open source software and may be put to any use.
> "
>