North American Network Operators Group
Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical

Re: S.2281 Hearing (was: Justice Dept: Wiretaps...)

  • From: Sean Donelan
  • Date: Sun Jun 20 23:14:14 2004 
On Sun, 20 Jun 2004, John Curran wrote:
>   It's not just the US Goverment with interest in this matter.
>   Lawful Intercept has basis in both EU directives and laws
>   of many member states.

You are aware the US Government pays for consultants to assist
in the development of international and other directives or
standards.  The great thing about standards is there are so
many to choose from.  When one group rejects the proposal, it
is shopped around to a more friendly forum and then re-introduced.

The US Government tried Key Escrow, and was more successful getting
other countries to adopt it than in the USA.

History is a good teacher.  But it will require visiting the
library, not just using Google.

>   There's likely to be disagreement on how far away that day
>   is; based on different views of technology availability and
>   criminal behavior.   As long as facilitating lawful intercept
>   has a reasonable cost and perceived benefit tradeoff,
>   there will be significant pressure to come up with viable
>   architectures for deployment.  In the US, this may take the
>   direction of simply facilitation of VoIP intercept, or could be
>   something more inclusive such as the architecture as outlined
>   by ETSI for mail, transport headers, and entire packet streams.

Every type of electronic communications in the USA may, and probably
has been intercepted at one time or another, not just VoIP.  Everything
outlined in the ETSI standards, and more, is available for purchase today
from vendors in the USA.

Its a lot more than simply facilitating access.  Under Title III, carriers
already had to provide reasonable technical assistance, with compensation.
The objection generally isn't about facilitating "access."  Law
enforcement already has "access," and has shown no reluctance in obtaining
court orders for ISPs to give them "access."

So what is the real problem?  What is law enforcement actually asking for?