IP: Fox News goes overboard

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

> X-Server-Uuid: 47feacc6-2336-11d3-82c6-0008c7db26d1
> From: "Baker, Stewart" <SBaker () steptoe com>
> To: "'farber () cis upenn edu'" <farber () cis upenn edu>
> cc: "Albertazzie, Sally" <SAlbertazzie () steptoe com>
>
>
> Dave:
>
> I can't remember whether you carried the Fox News story.  If you did, you
> might be interested in this.
>
> Stewart
>
>
>
> Fox News recently reported that the FBI has a plan to change the
> architecture of the Internet, centralizing it and providing "a technical
> backdoor to the networks of Internet service providers."  Like many others,
> I thought this was big news, and rather surprising.  Until I realized that
> the reporter only cited one source and that it was, well, me.  Fox News's
> claims go beyond the facts I provided to her, and beyond any that I know
> about.
>
> To be clear, I believe that the FBI is at work on an initiative to make
> Internet communications, indeed any packet data communications, more
> susceptible to intercept and more productive of non-content data about
> communications -- the sort of "pen register" data that was expressly
> approved for Internet communications in the recent antiterrorism bill.  This
> initiative will have architectural implications for packet data
> communications systems.  The FBI is likely to press providers of those
> services to centralize communications in nodes where interception will be
> more convenient, and it is likely to call on packet data services to build
> systems that provide more information about the communications of their
> subscribers.
>
> The vehicle for this initiative is CALEA, the Communications Assistance for
> Law Enforcement Act, a 1994 enactment that actually requires telecom
> carriers to redesign their networks to provide better wiretap capabilities.
> The act is supposed to exempt information services, but the vagueness of
> that provision has encouraged the FBI to expand its mandate into packet-data
> communications.  The Bureau is now preparing a general CALEA proposal for
> all packet-data systems.  While I have not seen it, the Bureau's past
> interventions into packet-data and other communications architecture have
> had two characteristics -- they have sought more centralization in order to
> simplify interception and they have asked providers to generate new data
> messages about their subscribers' activities -- messages that are of value
> only to law enforcement.
>
> There are real legal and policy questions that should be raised about this
> effort.  In my view, it goes beyond what Congress intended in 1994.  And the
> implications for Internet users and technologies deserve to be debated.  But
> making these points, as I did with Fox News, is not the same as saying that
> the FBI has a firm plan to centralize the Internet and build back doors into
> all ISP networks.  If Fox News wants to break that story, it will need a
> source other than me.
>
> Stewart Baker
> Steptoe & Johnson LLP
> 1330 Connecticut Avenue, N.W.
> Washington, DC 20036


For archives see:
http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/