The Telecom Programmers Full Employment Bill -- a personal view from your humble editor -- *****erro

[David Farber <>]

As I read the "Superhighway Surveillance Bill" it seems to me several
things will be true. They are:


1. The cost of the re-engineering of the common carrier systems considered
under the law which seem to include the telephone, cable and network
structures will cost a lot more than the minor hundreds of millions being
talked about , bet it is 2-3 at the  least,. Unless the telephone
communications software has changed a lot since I used to design it, making
such "minor" changes is going to be a nightmare -- and an expensive one.
The same is going to be true for the Internet. Note in the case of the
Internet, my guess is the volunteer labor that mostly built large parts of
the software will "go on strike" and at the very least be non-cooperative.
That will require hiring paid people and forming companies. Another guess
is, that in the academic net community, taking part in  such an activities
will be roughly equal to doing research for the CIA.


2. Substantial issues arise as to how much constraint will have to be put
on the features and services inorder to reasonably fulfill the law (as it
reads now in the proposed bill) and what the impact of this would be on the
competative situation in the foreign market.


3. I suspect that in the network case it will require major changes in host OS
software to allow the correct passing of proper ID to the network as it
goes through OS layers and local networks. That means MS and others will
also dip in to the federal cash register.


I tried to stay off the civil liberty issues. A lot is being said about that.


As I said it will be The Telecom Programmers Full Employment Bill. Good
thing we have started a Telcom program at Penn.


Anyone take issue?


Dave