Dave: This is disturbing. The FCC Report and Order on CALEA (see http:// cryptome.org/fcc070506.htm) appears to drag all broadband providers -- including small, rural ISPs such as myself -- into a messy regulatory regime, merely because one of my customers might choose to use a VoIP service. Worse still, the requirements are vague and potentially extremely onerous. I do not offer VoIP myself, but of course it is possible for any of my customers to do VoIP via a third party service. Now, any VoIP service worth its salt would encrypt conversations such that it would be pointless to intercept calls by tapping my network. Any rational law enforcement agency would want to go to one of the ends, where the data was present in the clear, to listen in on the call. What's more, even the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, which recently ruled in an awkward, poorly reasoned split decision (see http://www.epic.org/privacy/wiretap/ace_v_fcc.pdf for the text) that the FCC could define the words of a statute differently in different contexts to reach an outcome it desired, admits that non-VoIP traffic is clearly not subject to interception under CALEA. There is no rational reason to subject an ISP such as myself to the statute's expensive requirements. Yet, the FCC is trying to do so. What's more, to add insult to injury, it has stated that it does not intend to allow ISPs to be compensated for the expense of making their networks tappable. In short, the FCC seems eager to impose requirements upon us which would do nothing to enhance homeland security but could well drive us and other independent ISPs out of business. This would ensure a cable/telco duopoly and hamper the expansion of broadband service to rural areas like ours. In my opinion, the FCC R&O *must* be challenged via an appeal of the lower court's ruling to the Supreme Court. Otherwise, the end of broadband competition may have just come much closer. --Brett Glass, LARIAT.NET ------------------------------------- You are subscribed as eugen@leitl.org To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/ ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature which had a name of signature.asc]