Re: The Telecom Programmers Full Employment Bill -- a personal view from your humble editor

[David Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>]

> Date: Sun, 27 Feb 94 18:37:40 -0500
> From: Stephen D Crocker <crocker () tis com>
>
> I may be naiive, I don't quite see how the surveillance can be applied
> to the Internet.  The Internet is built outside of the common
> carriers.  The protocols are defined by the user community.  The most
> one can tell from the visible addressing is the IP address; deeper
> information is usually hidden from view.  With the greater use of
> application gateways, the visible IP addresses don't tell you much.
> Unless the Gov't is going to insist that every machine connected to
> the Internet be tappable and maintain information in a form they can
> interpret, I don't see quite how the surveillance idea will work.
>
> Perhaps the direction the Gov't will push things is that each user has
> to get service from an authorized provider, i.e. no sharing of services.
> With that rule in place, laws and regulations governing authorized
> providers will have the desired effect.
>
> This fits right in with the rhetoric about retaining the existing
> balance.  It now becomes evident how terrible the breakup of AT&T is.
>
>
> Steve


Steve you are not at all naive. The only way that we could see last time
the bill was being discussed to do what they wanted in the network world
was to require that host systems be tappable and indeed maintain the
information needed. That is why the cost went from astronomical to
incredible.


I fail to see how insisting on an user using an authorized subscriber will
do the deed. Look at UPenn. In order to understand who is saying what to
whom, it will be necessary to basically require either OS intervention or
that EACH person deal with the environment via an identifiable single user
system. Hmm maybe requiring Capstone chips to positively identify traffic
as coming from a given single user system.


As the ancient chinese saying goes


May you live in interesting times.