On Sat, 19 Jun 2004, John Curran wrote:
S.2281 takes the middle of the road position in areas such as lawful intercept, universal service fund, and E911. At a high-level, those VoIP services which offer PSTN interconnection (and thereby look like traditional phone service in terms of capabilities) under S.2281 pick up the same regulatory requirements.
It sounds good, if you assume there will always be a PSTN. But its like defining the Internet in terms of connecting to the ARPANET. What about Nextel's phone-to-phone talk feature which doesn't touch the PSTN? What about carriers who offer "Free" on-net calling, which doesn't connect to the PSTN and off-net calling to customers on the PSTN or other carriers. Will the bad guys follow the law, and only conduct their criminal activities over services connected to the PSTN?
With respect to facilitating lawful intercept, the opening comments of Ms. Laura Parsky (Deputy Assistant Attorney General, US DoJ) and James Dempsey, Executive Director of the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) are quite informative. The DoJ view is that S.2281 is not enough, and any service using switching or transport should facilitate lawful intercept. This position has the advantage of clarity, but there are lots of communications (chat/IM/etc) that are going to hard to decode and make readily available as needed. It is also an expansion of the current framework of CALEA, which specifically sets aside information services including email and messaging.
Its a return to DoJ's pre-CALEA position. Its almost a word-for-word replay of the debates in 1992/1993 and the Digital Telephony proposals. http://www.eff.org/Privacy/CALEA/digtel92_old_bill.draft Briefing Report to the Subcommittee on Telecommunications and Finance, Committee on Energy and Commerce of the House of Representatives by the United States General Accounting Office (GAO/IMTEC-92-68BR, July 1992), The FBI now has the technical ability required to wiretap certain technologies, such as analog voice communications carried over public networks' copper wire. However, since 1986, the FBI has become increasingly aware of the potential loss of wiretapping capability due to the rapid deployment of new technologies, such as cellular and integrated voice and data services, and the emergence of new technologies such as Personal Communication Services, satellites, and Personal Communication Numbers. There are six current or imminent telecommunications technologies that the FBI needs to be able to wiretap. These are (1) analog and digital using copper wire transport, (2) analog and digital using fiber optic transport, (3) Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN), (4) Private Branch Exchange (PBX), (5) broadband, and (6) cellular. There are also three future technologies for which wiretapping capabilities need to be addressed: (1) satellite switches, (2) Personal Communication Services (PCS), and (3) Personal Communication Number (PCN). Further, the FBI needs to be able to wiretap any special features, such as call forwarding or electronic mail.