Subject: [Raven] Which act says you must?

From: narellec <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 21 Dec 1999 15:31:59 +1100

Ed wrote:
>>Some people want standards for tapping so their costs to
>>comply to laws are as low as possible.
>
>Please provide a quotation of the law that you have in mind... What law?
>What country? Please.... a quote of that law???

See the full text of the Australian Acts at:

http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/ta1979350/index.html

Subsequent modifications under the Telecommunications Act 1999 clarify things
somewhat...

http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/ta1997214/

Commentary
http://www2.austlii.edu.au/itlaw/articles/Waters_Interception.html

You see? We have to. Legal compliance is an obligation. That makes
two significant jurisdictions. The EU and Australia.

Narelle

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From: Ed Stone <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 21 Dec 1999 07:47:37 -0500

At 11:31 PM 12/20/1999 , you wrote:

>You see? We have to. Legal compliance is an obligation.

No, I don't see. Would you please provide the specific quotes of those laws 
which you allege require that IP protocols be altered.

Next, please tell us what national entities (currently you assert Australia 
and EU) have the power to require IETF to modify protocols to facilitate 
wiretapping. For example, if Iraq makes a new wiretap law that would 
require futher and different IP protocols to service, is IETF to again 
modify the protocols? Why not? Which nation's laws shall IETF honor? 
Myanmar? China? Syria? Libya?

N.B.  It is at this time that the rabbit usually runs away from the "law" 
hole and back to the "customer demand" hole....

--
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Ed Stone
[email-masked]
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From: "Richard Payne" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 21 Dec 1999 10:02:26 -0500

> two significant jurisdictions. The EU and Australia.

which was highly informative (although I think that should be the
Netherlands and Australia: as we have laboriously clarified, an EU
resolution is not a national law). Why we don't count more countries (e.g.
"three jurisdictions: Netherlands, Australia, and China"; "four
jurisdictions: Netherlands, Australia, China, and Saudi Arabia") is an
exercise for the reader.

Three excerpts from the commentary article by Nigel Waters are particularly
interesting:

"The law enforcement community often try to argue that they are simply
trying to maintain the existing level of capability in the face of new
technology and changing media of communications. However, in an unusually
frank admission, the Minister, Warwick Smith, in the second reading debate,
noted that the intention is to provide "a new level of interception
capability"."

"The most controversial, and worrying, amendments allow warrants to be
issued in future by designated members of the Administrative Appeals
Tribunal. This was presented by the government, and eventually accepted by
the Opposition, as an unavoidable necessity given the unwillingness of
federal court judges to continue to perform the role exclusively."

"The community will also need to be even more vigilant in respect of further
extensions of law enforcement powers, with the telecommunications industry
just one of the arenas in which this perennial struggle to keep a sensible
balance of public interests is played out."

I recommend that everyone read the commentary just so they can see how the
politicians put one over on the people with little or no debate.

All of this is a sad state of affairs for Australians, and was clearly
arrived at in a way that no-one could call democratic with a straight face.
However, it in no way follows that the IETF is obliged to develop a standard
to make it easy for the Australian government to do what they want.

It is also the case that an interception capability is useful only for
traffic analysis if the relevant data are properly encrypted. Could narellec
let us know if anyone has been arrested for using SSL?

Richard Payne