German court rules e-mail blocking 'illegal'.

["Kang, Joseph S." <jo...@netex.com>]

Not sure how this will work itself out (or how old this story is) but it's
probably worth noting and keeping an eye on...

"The Higher Regional Court now has ruled that blocking email by content is
unlawful as it is considered confidential in German law. Blocking is only
allowed when, say, a viral attack is imminent."

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/01/18/german_email_blocking/

Anyone know enough German (or is German) who can translate the ruling that's
linked in the above article?  The Google translated version is a tad hard to
decipher.

-Joe K.
Systems Administrator
Network Executive Software, Inc.
888-604-5573 / postmaster(at)netex(dot)com 

Re: German court rules e-mail blocking 'illegal'.

[go...@gmxpro.net]

As far as i understood this is that mails must
get forwarded even if they are spam or not, there is only
one exception: virus mails, they are permitted to drop without
forwarding.

Spamassassin shouldnt have this problem unless you drop
the mails on a MTA level.

go ....






> Not sure how this will work itself out (or how old this story is) but it's
> probably worth noting and keeping an eye on...
> 
> "The Higher Regional Court now has ruled that blocking email by content is
> unlawful as it is considered confidential in German law. Blocking is only
> allowed when, say, a viral attack is imminent."
> 
> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/01/18/german_email_blocking/
> 
> Anyone know enough German (or is German) who can translate the ruling
> that's
> linked in the above article?  The Google translated version is a tad hard
> to
> decipher.
> 
> -Joe K.
> Systems Administrator
> Network Executive Software, Inc.
> 888-604-5573 / postmaster(at)netex(dot)com 
> 

Re: German court rules e-mail blocking 'illegal'.

[Roger WJ Alterskjær <ro...@vm.ntnu.no>]

I had the same thought when initially setting up our system. Our 
university has pretty strict rules regarding content-filtering. I got 
around it by having SA tag spam (using X-Spam-Status, no subject 
re-write), then a procmail in each users folder autmagically puts these 
into a Spam-folder. All users have been informed of this and are thereby 
free to do what they will with Spam-folder content. Some (including 
myself) have crontabs that remove old spam after a pre-determined number 
of days, weeks, or months.

Also nice 'cause my backupserver skips .Spam- and .Trash-folders. ;-)

-Roger

Re: German court rules e-mail blocking 'illegal'.

[C-Store Christoph Peter <c....@c-store.de>]

Hi,

there is a pretty good summary linked within the article :

http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/55210

This decision deals with filtering the email of a person who had left the 
university and tried to stay in contact with his former co-workers. The 
universitiy did not want thjis, and thus blocked all email containing the 
former employees name.

This has got nothing to do with spam filtering, unless somebody complains 
that he/she wants to read all the nonsense 8-)

Cheers,

C-Store Hard- und Software GmbH
Christoph Peter
Düstere Straße 20
37073 Göttingen

http://www.c-store.de
info@c-store.de
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Kang, Joseph S." <jo...@netex.com>
To: <us...@spamassassin.apache.org>
Sent: Wednesday, January 19, 2005 3:52 PM
Subject: German court rules e-mail blocking 'illegal'.


> Not sure how this will work itself out (or how old this story is) but it's
> probably worth noting and keeping an eye on...
>
> "The Higher Regional Court now has ruled that blocking email by content is
> unlawful as it is considered confidential in German law. Blocking is only
> allowed when, say, a viral attack is imminent."
>
> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/01/18/german_email_blocking/
>
> Anyone know enough German (or is German) who can translate the ruling 
> that's
> linked in the above article?  The Google translated version is a tad hard 
> to
> decipher.
>
> -Joe K.
> Systems Administrator
> Network Executive Software, Inc.
> 888-604-5573 / postmaster(at)netex(dot)com
> 

Re: German court rules e-mail blocking 'illegal'.

[Ralph Seichter <sp...@sentries.org>]

Joe K. wrote:

> Anyone know enough German (or is German) who can translate the
> ruling that's linked in the above article?

As I am lacking the time for a full translation: the core of the
ruling is that the university had, under German law, no right to
block all mail originating from or sent to a specific (former)
employee, because action of filtering violates the "Brief- und
Fernmeldegeheimnis" (which translates roughly to "letter and
telecommunications secrecy", AFAIK).

It was noted that this does *not* imply that filtering spam is
illegal, because ISPs implementing spam filters do so with the
approval/consent of their customers. In this special case, the
former university employee was not notified of the action taken
(neither were his communication partners) and when he finally found
out about the process, he did not agree and insisted on receiving
and sending mail without interference.

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, and if my summary of the case is
misleading or just plain wrong, it is all my fault. Mea culpa. ;-)

-- 
Mit freundlichen Grüßen / Yours sincerely
Dipl. Inform. Ralph Seichter

HORUS-IT
Ahornweg 10
D-57635 Oberirsen
Tel +49 2686 987880
Fax +49 2686 987889
http://horus-it.de/