North American Network Operators Group

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Re: FCC Issues Rule Allowing FBI to Dictate Wiretap-Friendly Designfor In ternet Services

  • From: Tony Li
  • Date: Sat Aug 06 20:27:42 2005

> Practically, what this means is that the government will be asking broadband providers 
> - as well as companies that manufacture devices used for broadband
> communications – to build insecure backdoors into their networks,
> imperiling the privacy and security of citizens on the Internet.


I'm sorry, but this is simply an unsupportable statement.  What is
required of routers is that the provider be able to configure the device
to make copies of certain packets to a monitoring port.  Assuming that
the monitoring port is duly managed, how does this qualify as "insecure"?


> It also hobbles technical innovation by forcing companies involved in 
> broadband to redesign their products to meet government requirements.


As opposed to hobbling innovation by meeting customer requirements?

There are many issues with CALEA that one can object to, primarily
having to do with the checks necessary to ensure that appropriate
warrants are obtained and that the traffic is appropriately filtered
before monitoring.  I'm disappointed that EFF is so off the mark here.

Tony