There were some very thoughtful posts on the lawful intercept issue raised by Jeff last week.
Aswath Rao puts aside the "rightness" of the FCC’s position completely, and instead looks at how it could be implemented. Among the many good points he makes is this little jewel: "I want to bring to your attention that complying to CALEA requirement will not only be expensive for VoIP providers; it will also destroy the basic architectural advantage." CALEA can kill the stupid network by forcing all traffic through a proxy. He proposes determining whether signalling or signalling and media is required in a tap situation and then argues that the ISP should be responsible if access to media is required. This proposal makes sense to me.
Richard Stastny is scathing. He concludes with "This is basically what the world likes so much with the US: explaining the whole world how democracy works by creating asymmetric laws. The best example on this was the proposed international court on war crimes: valid for everybody exept US citizens."
I have three basic questions:
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What is the cost?
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Will it make a difference?
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What guarantees do citizens have that their rights won’t be abused?
Alec Saunders is the Vice President of Developer Relations for BlackBerry make Research in Motion. This is his personal blog, with his personal viewpoints. Prior to this Alec was the CEO and co-founder of Calliflower — the easiest way to hold a meeting, online, on a conference call, or on the go. A double-decade veteran of product management and marketing, he spent nine years at Microsoft where he helped launch Windows 95, the first two versions of Internet Explorer, the Universal Plug and Play initiative, the push into home markets, opt-in email marketing and what might well go down in history as the very first direct email list ever.
