S.2281 Hearing (was: Justice Dept: Wiretaps...)

Mon Jun 21 17:48:16 UTC 2004

At 8:04 AM -0700 6/21/04, Owen DeLong wrote:
>John,
>	
>	While I agree that not many domestic (or EU) vendors will offer services
>contrary to the law in this area, do you truly believe this won't simply cause
>companies that really want to make money in this market to move to places where
>the laws are less difficult?  Afterall, I can get pretty good fiber connectivity
>in Malaysia or other parts of Asia/SoPac without really needing to worry much about
>any sort of LI procedures.  As long as the company offering the services does so
>via a web site and can collect on credit card billings (even if they have to keep
>rotating shell companies that do the billings), money can be made without dealing
>with US regulations.

With respect to enforcement, I am sure there are ways to prevent
being caught involving amusing offshore logistics, but that will still
prevent the vast majority of US businesses from offering non-2281
compliant services.

>	Frankly, the harder DOJ works on pushing this LI crap down our throats, the
>more damage they will do to US internet industry and consequently the more job-loss
>they will create.  Terrorists that are sophisticated enough to be a real threat
>already know how to:
>
>	1.	Cope with lawful intercept through disinformation and other tactics.
>	2.	Encrypt the communications (voice or otherwise) that they don't want
>		intercepted -- It's just not that hard any more.
>
>	I think the only advantage to DOJ working this hard on LI capabilities is that
>it may raise public awareness of the issue, and, may help get better cryptographic
>technologies more widely deployed sooner.  Other than that, I think it's just a lose
>all the way around.

I'm not advocating the DoJ's position on this matter, just trying to
clarify it for the list (since it was rather muddled in earlier postings).

/John