Fuddland

Did you know that it is perfectly legal, in the UK, to record telephone conversations — without the person on the other end consenting, or even knowing that they’re being recorded, provided that the recording is for personal use and will not be handed-over to a third party? I didn’t.

I found out because I’ve been wondering, for a while now, why on Earth all the major chat clients — MSN Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, and so on [even Skype] — provide the option to log all chat conversations without the individual say-so of each contact, or without any warning message telling the person on the other end of the chat that everything they say is being stored, unencrypted, on their friend’s hard-disk? I was hoping to draw parallels between logging chats and being able to record phonecalls at the push of a button, and aim for a legal minefield, but that’s been shot to pieces by the above information, so I can only fall back on the moral argument: how’d you like it if your mate suddenly revealed that they’d been taping all the conversations you’ve ever had with them?

Whilst I admit that I used to have the logging features of various chat clients turned on, some time ago I decided it wasn’t really right to build and keep those logs for no particular reason, and went about disabling the feature and erasing all chat-logs sitting on my drive. But that’s only half the issue, because — as far as I’m aware — no chat client flashes up any kind of warning or notification that says, “The other user is logging this conversation.” I think they should.

Google Talk has taken the best stab at it so far, with its Off the Record feature, but it’s not enabled by default for every user: I had to go through each of my contacts and set them to Off the Record. And whenever we begin a chat, it ominously informs us both, “This conversation is off the record,” as if I’m about to divulge some deeply private information.

I’m not saying that chat-logs can’t be useful, just that it should be mutually agreed if they’re to be kept. But what if a one party wants to renege an agreement? Should the other party be obliged to delete their copy? Should the chat client provide the ability for people both sides of a chat to delete the log, regardless of where the physical copy is. Ooh, not sure about that one.

But for now, you’ll just have to rest assured that, if you’re chatting with me online, I’m not keeping a record of what we’re saying. [I am, however, watching you from across the street through my thermo-binoculars.]

#1

Knit Nurse | 2007 / 02 / 01 – 15:22

Are logged chat conversations actually legally binding anyway? You could falsify them very easily. Maybe that’s the reason no consent is required.

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