Well, the thing that really got my attention was "...forcing equipment manaufacturers.." -- which is somewhat of a broad brush- stroke. Having said that, this has been discussed ad nauseum, has had the FCC rule on it, etc., and has -- at first blush-- seen U.S. courts support it. But the Internet is _not_ the U.S., and contrary to LEA and U.S. agency opinion, does not require everyone on the planet to comply. This presents a bunch of problems -- and submitting to arbitrary logic along the lines of (paraphrased) "Well, what's the problem?" doesn't even come close to illustrating that the problem is understood. That's the only point I was trying (and probably unsuccessfuly) to make. :-) And this: We work in a world where we're trying to keep bits flowing between various points in the Internet, and compliance to a basic set of accepted standards seems to be an environment which is becoming more and more clouded by "foo" -- where "foo" is your various garden variety scare tactic of the day. What a mess. - ferg -- Gadi Evron <ge@linuxbox.org> wrote: [snip]

The FBI has drafted sweeping legislation that would require Internet service providers to create wiretapping hubs for police surveillance and force makers of networking gear to build in backdoors for eavesdropping, CNET News.com has learned.

[snip] Potential abuse means a lot of things, and it certainly dictates prudence and vigilence by citizens and the Gov. That said, I think this may really be a win-win for both the LEO's and the ISP's. Than again, if an ISP is approached once every 20 years, I hope the FBI will be covering the costs. Someone always says they do? Gadi. [snip] -- "Fergie", a.k.a. Paul Ferguson Engineering Architecture for the Internet fergdawg(at)netzero.net ferg's tech blog: http://fergdawg.blogspot.com/