On Jan 1, 2013, at 10:36 AM, Alessandro Vesely <[email protected]> wrote:
> Was D.1 to ease wire tapping? By example, I, as a mail server operator > who is not a telecom, am not required by my country's laws to provide an > instrumentation whereby authorized investigators can obtain a list of a > user's correspondents on the fly. Yet that kind of data is said to be > essential for police operations. OTOH, SMTP doesn't consider that kind > of facilities, and fashionable implementations don't provide them. What > am I missing? In most countries, wiretap laws apply to public facilities. An enterprise mail server isn't a public facility. > Perhaps, as the old telephone system is fading away, the institutions > that founded it --local governments' branches-- should change their > mindset or just fade away as well... Should the IETF or other SDOs help > such transition? If you want something to fade away, making a fuss about it isn't a useful approach. The IETF's practice in the past has been to improve the Internet; I tend to think that's as it should be. That said, I'm also of the opinion that preventing a police force from conducting a proper criminal investigation is not a path to success. We like to say that the Internet routes around brokenness; so do police forces and legislative bodies. They define "brokenness" as anything that prevents them from doing their job, the same way we do. What I would far rather see is a set of technical mechanisms and supporting law that facilitate legitimate criminal investigations and expose the other kind.
