Monitoring, Flow Stats (Re: spam whore, norcal-systems)

Wed Feb 3 02:43:41 UTC 1999

At 11:28 AM 2/2/1999 -0500, John Fraizer wrote:
>(i) It shall not be unlawful under this chapter for an operator of a
>switchboard, or an officer, employee, or agent of a provider of wire or
>electronic communication service, whose facilities are used in the
>transmission of a wire or electronic communication, to intercept, disclose,
>or use that communication in the normal course of his employment while
>engaged in any activity which is a necessary incident to the rendition of
>his service or to the protection of the rights or property of the provider
>of that service, except that a provider of wire communication service to
>the public shall not utilize service observing or random monitoring except
>for mechanical or service quality control checks. 
>
>
>It would seem to me that blocking UCE to clients who have signed off on our
>policy of doing so would fall under the auspices of "normal course of his
>employment while engaged in any activity which is a necessary incident to
>the rendition of his service or to the protection of the rights or property
>of the provider of that service".

It has to be a "necessary incident". Routing is an example of something
thats necessary incident to rendition of service.  Or it could be for the
protection of rights or property (the oft-used abuse clause).

In this case, it says at the the end that service providers "shall not
utilize service observing or random monitoring except for mechanical or
service quality control checks"  

Of course, this is all moot with mutual consent. But then you have to show
where Norcal signed off on Verio's policy. Since they aren't Verio's
customer, it doesn't seem likely they agreed to Verio's policy.  And of
course, if Norcal claims they didn't agree to allow Verio to monitor and
publish their traffic, and Verio has no paper that Norcal did agree, it
seems difficult for Verio to prove that Norcal did agree.  Which adds up to
something called "exposure".

		--Dean

[Though, I suppose we have progressed from two years ago when people were
certain that 2511 "only applied to telcos".]

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           Plain Aviation, Inc                  dean at av8.com
           LAN/WAN/UNIX/NT/TCPIP          http://www.av8.com
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