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