Why are paper LOAs still used?

Tue Feb 27 10:21:42 UTC 2024

On Mon, Feb 26, 2024 at 1:20 PM Joe via NANOG <nanog at nanog.org> wrote:
>
> One thing that I recently read on this mailing list, is that at least in the US, a transmitting a fraudulent LOA is a federal crime - wire fraud. [0]
> Being able to hopefully charge and convict someone performing fraud is a useful deterrent.

This would be just as true of an Emailed declaration signed with the
sender's name or other
digital representation of a signature.  If there is a fraudulent
scheme, then deliberately
providing a false emailed declaration of authorization just as criminal.

My suggestion would be that a LOA should only ever be used as a
Supportive document,
it could be used for that,  and Verifying the data using IRR or RPKI
after would still be necessary.
An LOA on its own should never be enough.

An LOA can still be Incorrect or Wrong due to a Typo'd ASN or IP
number, but Not fraudulent.
And even if the information is deliberately wrong it might not meet
the conditions for fraud.

It is also possible the sender of the LOA can send an erroneous
document and have No
legal responsibility for the results of incorrectly including some IP
or AS number on the form.

Surely a network service provider must have some level of duty to
verify the authenticity of
information furnished on the LOAs and confirm that the IP numbers are
Not incorrectly entered,
for example clerical errors in processing the document.

> -joe
--
-J