CALEA or "You weren't listening".

Vanity | Self

[The Watcher]

I posted a while back about the financial and business aspects of CALEA on your local ISP's.

Oddly enough, most people thought I was just ignorant. Well, THEY are ignorant.

There's an interesting blog thread here: http://blogs.globalcrossing.com/paulk?from=60

He makes a very sharp point. While the original CALEA legislation was little other than requiring (and paying) the telcos to ensure that normal phone taps could occur, the DOJ and FCC have suddenly strayed far beyond that. VIOP was unknown at the time CALEA was written. But, it's been construed by the FCC to apply to all services that carry voice, chat, or communication that COULD be intercepted over the internet, as well.

Thus, your ISP, local community network, local school, university, EVERYONE that connects you to the internet at faster than 200 kilobits per second is required to pre-tap your 'net connection.

To make a relevant comparison, to which the non-techie can relate.. It's as if tomorrow, federal housing laws required that peepholes be installed, and stands at every window, remotes controls for the curtains, be installed on every home. EVERY home, and that no rooms in the home be invisible from outside the home, for law enforcement purposes. If that means gutting the house to reveal otherwise hidden rooms, that's what it takes.

To top it off, the building codes were vague and said merely that "the means of seeing every place in the house" must be installed, and that you must hire consultants and lawyers to ensure that your home complies. And that if the cop sent to spy on you is too short to look through the peep hole in the door and bathroom wall, then you're going to be fined as a builder, homeowner, or landlord, EVEN IF YOU GOT APPROVAL FOR YOUR DESIGN AND THE CONSULTANTS AND LAWYERS SAID IT WAS OK and you got approval for your plans on paper.

The FCC and FBI have publicly stated that they do not give legal advice, and so, you must hire lawyers to figure out IF and HOW you must comply, and consultants to tell you how to do it, unless you comply with "industry standards", except that there's no industry standard, and if there ever becomes one, it may bankrupt you to try to implement it.

NO, there is no money from the government to become compliant. That was exhausted long ago and it was only for the telcos anyway.

Of course the idea of requiring homes to have the means of letting law enforcement look in anywhere and any spot at will is absurd. But CALEA is interpreted as EXACTLY THAT for all digital communications, period. And not only that, it's required of everyone AT THEIR OWN EXPENSE, as well.

Just for those of you who wonder, I run an ISP.

BTW, a few days ago, the FCC required every ISP, telco, network provider, and so on, file documents attesting to their readiness for CALEA. They required all of us to explain how and what we're doing to be compliant, if not, why not, and when that will be rectified. Yet many of us have absolutely NO idea how to comply, or even what is required to comply, since both the FCC and FBI adamantly refuse to specify.

"Hire lawyers and consults" is all they say.