| I thought the following question might be of interest: Imagine Bob owns an | ISP. Bob doesn't like government agencies very much and has (yet) no | surveillence equipment installed. Alice now makes a contract with Bob that he | provides internet access to Alice and she pays for it. If Bob is forced to | install Carnivore-like equipment or anything of the like, he promises to tell | Alice immediately. If he doesn't and Alice finds out, he has to pay [insert | very large sum here] $ to Alice. Presumably, this would be a legal contract and would have a basis in court, I have no idea how that would work however.
| Now what happens when Bob is legally (or otherwise) forced to make his | network a "patriotic" one and isn't allowed to tell Alice? | (as it is proposed in this "Convention on Cyber-Crime" by the European Union; | at least that is my reading, which may very well be wrong; but in fact it is | of no relevance here) In title 2 of the USA/PATRIOT Act, not only are ISP remunerated for the costs incurred in the "patriotification" (is that even a word?) of his network, but the whole process is voluntary on Bob's part and, should Bob choose to pursue this course of action, nothing he does can be brought against him. He is exempted and in some cases prohibited, by law to tell Alice about the whole thing. Wether or not this works out, legally and which law has precedence, the contract that was pre-existing or the anti-terrorist measure will be more important, only a judge will decide when and if it does go to court. Check out the actual text of the USA/PaATRIOT Act, titles 2 and 8 are particularly alarming, not the others aren't as well, but 2 and 8 hit home for me at least. --Gabe
