Subject: RE: [Raven] Comments on Draft -- Take 2

From: Chris Savage <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2000 12:13:59 -0500

>-----Original Message-----
>From: chefren [mailto:[email-masked]]
>Sent: Monday, February 07, 2000 11:39 AM
>To: [email-masked]
>Subject: RE: [Raven] Comments on Draft -- Take 2
>
>
>On 7 Feb 00, at 10:56, Chris Savage wrote:
>
>> IMHO this portion of the draft is pointing out that as matters stand
>> today, the divergence of national laws regarding wiretapping 
>is one thing
>> that makes an IETF standard to facilitate tapping a bad or unworkable
>> idea.
>
>Is this "tested"? I don't know of divergence of national 
>laws, to the contrary, all EU countries are lining up.

My own knowledge is most focused on US/CALEA issues.  AFAIK the specific
requirements of CALEA (which applies, one will recall, only to carriers and
manufacturers of carrier equipment, not to "information service" providers)
are unique to the US in various respects.  Other countries have other
specific things that one has to do, as I understand it.

Some time ago I pointed out that to actually determine the degree of
difference/overlap between the legal requirements of various countries would
entail a non-trivial amount of lawyer time and effort.  That said, due to
various quirkiness-es of US law, I would suspect that what CALEA will
require for particular carriers/manufacturers will be different from what
other countries will require.

Note also that in most countries, I think, people who are not carriers
(e.g., in the US, ISPs, backbone providers) are still subject to getting
served with a court order to cough up information, allow the attachment of
listening devices, etc.  The questions in such cases are (a) what kind of a
showing does the LEA have to make to the judge to get the order? and (b) who
bears any extraordinary costs associated with the activity?  From this
perspective, CALEA is a lot more about allocating costs than about technical
capabilities (although there is obviously a large "technical capabilities"
component to it).

So, to answer your question directly, no, AFAIK my proposition has not been
"tested" -- the "testing" is what would take a bunch of lawyers a bunch of
(high-cost) hours to confirm.  But it strikes me as having a very high
likelihood of being true.

>> In a totally hypothetical world in which (say) countries
>> making up 95% of 'net traffic and users had effectively
>> identical wiretapping requirements, divergence of
>> national laws would not be as strong an argument against
>> IETF activity in this area.  It does not follow that the
>> IETF, in such a situation, either would or should create
>> a standard. It is just that in such a situation the
>> reasoning might have to be a bit different.  As someone
>> famous once said, "sufficient unto the day is the evil
>> thereof..." 
>
>
>I see a strong kind of "not invented here" resistance.
>
>There is no will to think about what wiretap standard could 
>be there is only an "against".

It seems to me that the predominant opinion on the list is that wiretapping
by LEAs is a (maybe) necessary evil, but plainly an evil that the IETF
should not facilitate.  Also, that any "legal" wiretapping regime could be
abused by either oppressive authorities (insert your favorite villainous
regime here) or by out-of-sanction LEAs (the LAPD example), not to mention
random Bad Guys who somehow get in a position to use the capability.  This
leads to a consensus that on the whole facilitating the process from a
technical perspective is, net-net-net, a Bad Thing, as opposed to a Good
Thing.

The point at this late stage of the discussion is not to claim that your
counter-arguments have zero persuasive power.  Perhaps by virtue my own
(lawyer) training (every issue has at least two sides), it seems clear to me
that the persuasive power of your arguments is well above zero.  Even so,
those arguments have failed, in this forum, to persuade very many people.
Again, maybe due to my training, the notion that good, sensible arguments
might lose (and, yes, I know some on the list would not credit yours in that
way) is not shocking -- it happens every day.  Either because better, more
sensible arguments prevail, or because the decision-maker perceives the
actual issue to be one as to which the arguments are not quite as strong or
relevant as their proponent would like.

>
>IETF could perfectly design a auditable version of tcpdump.

I'm not techie enough to comment on this.

>A good tap just taps everything to and from a programmed IP 
>address without editing the content in any way. That's all, 
>nothing more and nothing less.

Isn't that do-able today?

>"Divergence of national laws", sigh...

We still live in a multi-national world.  Perhaps we always will.  Don't
think of it as social bug, think of it as a social feature...

Chris S.
All views/opinions my own...

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---

From: "chefren" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2000 19:35:10 +0100

On 7 Feb 00, at 12:13, Chris Savage wrote:

> difference/overlap between the legal requirements of various countries
> would entail a non-trivial amount of lawyer time and effort.  That said,
> due to various quirkiness-es of US law, I would suspect that what CALEA
> will require for particular carriers/manufacturers will be different from
> what other countries will require.

IETF should look primarily at technical side of the 
problem, that's pretty simple: pass al information to and 
from an IP address without changing the information. The 
information should be encapsulated in a timestamped package 
with details like who had set the tap, which warrant, 
checksums against modifications and so on. Not that 
difficult.

..
 
> So, to answer your question directly, no, AFAIK my proposition has not
> been "tested" -- the "testing" is what would take a bunch of lawyers a
> bunch of (high-cost) hours to confirm.  But it strikes me as having a very
> high likelihood of being true.

I don't see the necessity of a bunch of lawyers. This can 
and should be handled strictly as a technical problem.

..

> It seems to me that the predominant opinion on the list is that
> wiretapping by LEAs is a (maybe) necessary evil, but plainly an evil that
> the IETF should not facilitate.

"Maybe necessary" or "necessary"? That's no question. It is 
necessary and not up to IETF to decide. It's up to 
governments and important ones have decided.

> Also, that any "legal" wiretapping regime
> could be abused by either oppressive authorities (insert your favorite
> villainous regime here) or by out-of-sanction LEAs (the LAPD example), not
> to mention random Bad Guys who somehow get in a position to use the
> capability.

Since when is the IETF interested in the message? Or in 
this case specific use of the Internet?

> This leads to a consensus that on the whole facilitating the
> process from a technical perspective is, net-net-net, a Bad Thing, as
> opposed to a Good Thing.

That's not upon IETF, IETF shouldn't be a political 
organization.

> The point at this late stage of the discussion 

Late? The proposed text has nothing to do with a solution 
for the real problem. We still have to start...

> is not to claim that your
> (lawyer) training (every issue has at least two sides), it seems clear to
> me that the persuasive power of your arguments is well above zero.  Even
> so, those arguments have failed, in this forum, to persuade very many
> people. Again, maybe due to my training, the notion that good, sensible
> arguments might lose (and, yes, I know some on the list would not credit
> yours in that way) is not shocking -- it happens every day.

No problems with that here...

> Either because better, more sensible arguments prevail,
> or because the decision-maker perceives the actual issue
> to be one as to which the arguments are not quite as
> strong or relevant as their proponent would like. 

The decision-maker, IETF, has made standards for a long 
time happily with little or even no interference with laws. 
Unfortunately(!) that has ended. The current stuborness of 
IETF may well be described as childish...

> Isn't that do-able today?

Of course but if everyone in this world does it in a 
different way the incompatibilities will cost an 
unnecessary amount of money. To do it well and as good and 
secure as possible it has to be implemented in routers in a 
standard way.

..

+++chefren

---

From: Ed Stone <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 07 Feb 2000 14:02:03 -0500

>for the real problem. We still have to start...

IETF has decided NOT to start. See the draft.

>IETF may well be described as childish...

The draft states IETF's position. Do you have contributions to the 
definition of wiretapping or the rationale?

--
--------------------------
Ed Stone
[email-masked]
--------------------------

---

From: Christian Price <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 07 Feb 2000 12:47:01 -0700

I think it is more accurate to say that the IETF has determined that the
lack of tapability in strong encryption is not a problem.  One does not
need to fix something that is not broken.

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---

From: Ed Stone <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 07 Feb 2000 15:10:59 -0500

>need to fix something that is not broken.

It has been my understanding that the wiretap issue addressed by this 
process is separate and apart from any encryption issues. Specifically, it 
excludes matters related to encryption of the contents that may be 
intercepted by wiretaps, as I understand it.

---

From: "chefren" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2000 21:04:52 +0100

> need to fix something that is not broken.

Strong encrypted data is as tapable as unencrypted data.

+++chefren