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

[John Curran <jcurran () istaff org>]

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