RE: Legal question

[Carl Friedberg <friedberg () exs esb com>]

I am not familiar with any of the statutes which define wiretapping and
protected communications. However, given "convergence" of telecommunications
and data communications, and voice over IP (VOIP), at the very least,
(assuming you did NOT have any permission to hook up the sniffer) you would
probably have to discard the VOIP without looking at it...

I would imagine that if you did not have a legitimate reason for snooping
the data, you could be in for some legal troubles (ie. theft of trade
secrets comes to mind)...

I'm sure it depends on circumstances. Are you an ISP trouble-shooting a
connection from that network? Probably allowed, but you would have to be
careful about what you did with the packet data. I would hope that this is
covered in a contract between the ISP/IPP and the customer...

Are you a competitor who bribed someone to let you into a wireroom with the
sniffer? I think you get the drift...

Just my 2 cents, carl () comets com

-----Original Message-----
From: Crumrine, Gary L [mailto:CrumrineGL () state gov]
Sent: Friday, January 14, 2000 5:51 AM
To: firewall-wizards () nfr net
Subject: Legal question


After wearing out my fingers during a heated conversation with another
colleague over legalities of certain actions, a question came up in my mind
concerning sniffers and their usage.

If a sniffer was placed on the outside of a given network, and was
configured to sniff packets coming from that network only, does this
constitute an illegal wire tap?  And do the same rules apply to data as they
do voice?  In some cases it transits the same copper wire... ouch I am
getting a headache..