In five pages criticisms of the 2000 Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act are examined in a discussion of post 911 abuses and privacy violations. Two sources are cited in the bibliography.
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how private their information is once it hits the world of cyberspace. Because of the ease by which anyone can hack into a computer system and/or monitor e-mail exchanges and
even discover what a persons tastes are by placing a "cookie" into a computer, there has been justified fear that an e-society means that privacy might be a thing of
the past. This thought was not exactly downplayed when Great Britain passed its Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, which basically gave permission to the UKs government to examine anything
that appeared every remotely suspicious in cyberspace. Is there a justification for such a breach of privacy, particularly when it has become
known that the same terrorists who flew airplanes into the World Trade Centers on September 11, 2001 regularly used the Internet and other electronic portals to plan their deeds? Is
it then, OK to give up rights in the name of a more secure world? The purpose of this paper is
to examine these questions by first providing an overview of the Act, discussing the wide-spread criticism the Act attracted and then contemplating how the act might be helpful (or hurtful)
in apprehending potential terrorists. Overview of Act The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 - also known as RIPA is a long,
extraordinarily descriptive act that, boiled down, basically says that the government can access a persons electronic communications in an unrestricted manner (Hammerton, 2002). Although there are certain formats the government
must follow in order to monitor these communications (for example, the government cant hack, willy-nilly, into a persons e-mail correspondence without justifiable cause), RIPA does provide more freedom for government