Subject: Re: [Raven] Fly away, raven

From: Vernon Schryver <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 10:46:03 -0600 (MDT)

> From: Grenville Armitage <[email-masked]>

> ...
> The misplaced faith is the assumption that, if the IETF sticks its
> head in the sand, the wiretappers will say "oh, gee, this stuff's
> too hard for me to figure out" and will stop their efforts. Arrogant
> B.S. IMHO.  At best we can answer the question by saying "we'll
> develop protocols that allow law-abiding LEAs to do auditable
> taps". Leave out the sniping and chest-thumping about one's
> favorite experiences with non-law abiding LEAs. You wont (by
> definition) control non-law abiding LEAs by _anything_ you do here
> (meat space coercion tecnniques will do an end-run around any
> cute key security schemes you build....) so stop wasting breath
> about that subset of LEAs.

Ok, let's only consider law-abiding LEAs.

  - What law now or might ever require LEAs to prefer or need to use
     auditable taps?

  - Since tcpdump, netmon, and other ac hoc as well as standardized (e.g.
     RMON), non-auditing tapping facilities will always be available on
     the all wires that have auditable taps and many more wires that don't
     have auditable taps, why would any LEAs, including those who follow
     the letter and spirit of all laws, prefer auditable taps?

     Auditable taps will always carry the danger of embarrassing their
     users.  People know they make mistakes, and few prefer to make their
     innocent mistakes on tape.

  - Since tcpdump and RMON will always be available, why will equipment
     makers bother implementing auditing hooks in any new monitoring
     protocols?  If they do implement them, why will they go to the very
     large effort to ensure that the auditing is reasonably secure instead
     of like the familiar "unbreakable security one time pad random number
     generator" snake-oil sold as encryption?

The talk of auditable taps is like the arguments about Ident and TAP
several years ago.  The old arguments were "never mind that Ident/TAP can
be spoofed; it's vital anyway and will be widely used."  I'm now reading
"never mind that the notion of auditable and unmonitored taps side by side
on the same wires makes as much sense as auditing only half of a company's
books; LEAs will use only auditable taps."

Vernon Schryver    [email-masked]

P.S. it has been claimed in this list that "assualt weapons" are not
 allowed.  That is wrong at least in parts of the U.S.  I've know more
 than one person who went to the not very large trouble to get the license
 and then bought the same brand and model of machine gun issued to U.S.
 Army troups as genuine assualt weapons, and not the ordinary
 semi-automatic guns with scary looking black plastic that the demagogues
 pretend are so frightening.  I think having your own M-16 is a waste of
 money, but not a fraction as silly as some statements made here about
 regulating software and t-shirts.

_______________________________________________
raven mailing list
[email-masked]
http://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/raven

---

From: Grenville Armitage <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 10:17:46 -0700

Vernon Schryver wrote:
	[..]
>   - What law now or might ever require LEAs to prefer or need to use

Who cares? Not germane to the question facing this group.

>      the letter and spirit of all laws, prefer auditable taps?

Who cares? Not germane to the question facing this group.

>      innocent mistakes on tape.

And that observation helps the IESG how?

>      generator" snake-oil sold as encryption?

That's their implementation problem. Again, not germane to the
question facing this group.

> 	[..] I'm now reading

You're not reading my mails (I can't speak for those of other's) very well
then. I dont really care how many scenarios we can concoct where 'people'
will ignore (or break) an inconvenient auditing spec. Just whether the
IESG could walk a middle ground between yays and nays by asserting it
will only allow the IETF 'stamp of consensus' on specs that have audit
trail capabilities as default. Anything other discussions, tangents, and
utopian societies are, in the context of this raven list, is just
so much grandstanding.

Get a focus, people.

cheers,
gja

---

From: "chefren" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 19:42:50 +0200

>   - What law now or might ever require LEAs to prefer or need to use

Such laws are in place in The Netherlands and probably all 
over Europe concerning telephone taps.

>      the letter and spirit of all laws, prefer auditable taps?

The tapbox should have an independent connection from the 
internal backbones of a communication provider to the 
tapping room of law enforcement. If law enforcement would 
have access to those places they could become responsible 
if something goes wrong.

>      innocent mistakes on tape.

Tcpdump taps should allways embarrass the "user" in a 
serious courtroom.
 
>      protocols?

Because laywers will ask for serious proof and 
reject tcpdump's.

+++chefren

= =
Verdien 100 Euro bij aanbrengen van een nieuwe
klant voor een website: http://www.ii.nl/premie

---

From: Greg Broiles <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 12:07:12 -0700

> over Europe concerning telephone taps.

That's interesting. How long have the laws been in place? What's an
"auditable tap" in the telephone context? Do you have a citation for
these laws? I would like to read them. 

> Because laywers will ask for serious proof and 

This is absolutely false in the United States - perhaps it is true in
the Netherlands. In US state and federal courts, tcpdump output can be
admissible, and I believe it will always be admissible, at least as long
as paper records and tape recordings and photographs are also
admissible.

I don't know what your professional background is, but in the United
States, arguments like the ones you're making are popular among
technologists who think they can figure out how the courts work by
watching television.

To the extent that you're arguing for an international standard, you
should be aware that assumptions you're making about the rules of
evidence and proof are (apparently) subject to wide variation in local
practice.

In fact, given the wide variation between NL/EU law (as you report it)
and US law, I get the impression that a single international standard is
not workable, because the design assumptions and goals are so different
and incompatible to the point that they may be mutually exclusive.

You are turning a technical problem (capturing data) into a legal
question (is this captured data admissible in court?) in order to gain
political support for the design of technology to solve the technical
problem, but in the course of doing that you're going to have to
harmonize wildly different legal, political, and cultural traditions. 

The original question(s) had nothing to do with authentication or
admissibility. Adding those as design goals makes the problem much
more difficult technically, even as it may become easier politically. 

--
Greg Broiles
[email-masked]