Scott Granados wrote:
Why does anyone comply with CALEA? Especially after the abuses of the last 8 years and probably a lot farther back than that? I've been reading about the requirements and the idea that ISPs cooperate with law enforcement really makes me uneasy on a civil liberties basis. Does Uncle Sam scare tactic people in to compliance? There's just something about making things easier for the NSA and any number of alphabet soup agencies that strikes me as unamerican (to use their own phrase against them) and wrong. Or was it created simply to create a new space for security products and C, J and the others were really good at lobbying? Since it doesn't require the ISP to break open encrypted traffic it almost makes me think a public key system that lets the end user encrypt everything from phone to television with their own keys makes some sense so there's nothing left in the clear for entertaining the James Bond crowd! Probably not practical at all but this thread just convinced me not to use split tunneling.;)
Well, probably because it's REQUIRED BY LAW. Not complying is a felony, not just a simple civil offense. They go after company officers. Try convincing your company officers not to do it; see if they want to take the chance. All SPs were required to officially respond to the FTC with a plan for how they were going to make their network CALEA ready. Not replying was not an option.
Politics of the last administration aside, it's not a bad thing that SPs be able to assist law enforcement. Telcos have been required to do so for longer than most people on this list have been alive. As voice traffic moves off the PSTN to the Internet logically CALEA has to follow. Does that mean that the intelligence agencies will follow the letter of the law and not abuse it? Certainly not. The FBI has already shown that they will abuse it with National Security Letters. That will happen under any administration though. Hopefully it will be reduced under the present administration and the process will be tuned and refined. Intelligence agencies (IAs) will always want more data and consumers and their SPs will always want to give up less. The way we help limit the IAs is through the political processes, not through non-compliance. An individual's civil disobedience seldom works. Try non-compliance with the tax man and see how far you get.
Justin CALEA-compliant since 2007 _______________________________________________ cisco-nsp mailing list [email protected] https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/cisco-nsp archive at http://puck.nether.net/pipermail/cisco-nsp/
