North American Network Operators Group
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Re: packet inspection and privacy

  • From: David Charlap
  • Date: Tue Jun 25 10:11:25 2002 
Steven M. Bellovin wrote:

Mark Kent writes:

I recently claimed that, in the USA, there is a law that prohibits an
ISP from inspecting packets in a telecommunications network for
anything other than traffic statistics or debugging.

Was I correct?
No. Or at least you weren't; the Patriot Act may have changed it.
(I assume you're talking about U.S. law.)

There was a quirk in the wording of the law -- what you say is correct for *telephone* companies, but not ISPs.
You're referring to "common carrier" status, I think.

This isn't exclusively restricted to phone companies, but that's the way it is right now. I think it may also apply to non-voice carriers that sell circuits. I'm pretty certain that it does not apply to ISPs.

A common carrier is not allowed to monitor/filter traffic on customer circuits. They also can't be held responsible for the traffic on those circuits.

-- David