In message <20040323051819.GC21771(a)mithrak.localdomain>, Cameron Kerr writes:

Hello all, I know that in some countries there are legal requirements for how long logs are meant to be held for. Are their such laws like that in NZ, and can anyone point me to any references?

The closest "generic" legislation that I'm aware of is the Electronic Transactions Act 2002 (you can see it at, eg, http://www.legislation.govt.nz/ -- a site which annoyingly doesn't seem to permit deep linking due to gratituous use of Javascript). While that Act was a 2002 one I believe that various portions of it are only just coming into effect this year. As others have pointed out, there are both operational and other legal reasons for retaining various types of records for longer which in some instances might extend to log files. And various overseas cases have shown that it's useful to have an established policy (and stick to it) for data retention -- being able to legitimately say "as a matter of policy we always delete those after 4 weeks" is much more useful than having to say "oh, umm, yeah we deleted those logs you want". Ewen