On Thu, 10 May 2007 16:03:49 -0400 William Allen Simpson <william.allen.simpson@gmail.com> wrote:
Congress "authorized" CALEA (and there is also argument about whether the recent expansion to ISPs was authorized at all), it cannot be required of the public until Congress *appropriates* the funds, and they are received by us.
Just like the current argument about how to end the Iraq war. Only actual appropriations count.
Even non-lawyers should remember our basic civics lessons.
What appropriation? Have a look at the actual text of the law at http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=103_cong_bills&docid=f:h4922enr.txt.pdf (If the link doesn't work, go to thomas.loc.gov and look for bill H.R. 4922 from the 103rd Congress. If that still doesn't help, email me and I'll send you the PDF.) Anyway -- for the most part, the law does not impose mandates on the government, so there's no necessary appropriation. The law requires carriers to do certain things, which doesn't necessarily cost the government money. To be sure, the CALEA act does authorize money to reimburse carriers for the changes -- see Section 109. But that money was for upgrading facilities deployed before 1995, which I suspect applies to none of the gear we're talking about here... ("Help, my AGS+ isn't CALEA-compliant!") The law (Section 109(d)) does say what happens if the money isn't appropriated -- you're exempt until "the equipment, facility, or service is replaced or significantly upgraded or otherwise undergoes major modification." Does that sound like your POPs? (OT: When government spending is involved, Bill is absolutely right. The framers of the Constitution were very careful to make sure that Congress, not the President, had the right to raise taxes and authorize spending, and that military appropriations in particular could not be for longer than two years. Why? Because they were intimately familiar with British history, much of which included a perpetual struggle between the monarch and Parliament over money to wage war. If memory serves, Parliament gained control over that in 1243 (and definitely not very long after the Magna Carta), and it regularly used that power to rein in the king or queen. The monarch did have direct control over certain revenue sources -- but anything like that was carefully excluded from the American constitution.... It isn't possible to understand the Constitution without knowing British history.) --Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb