Lawful access is back in the news as Canwest has obtained documents that indicate that industry is battling with government over who should bear the costs.
Industry Objects to Lawful Access Costs
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It’s always been all about the money
CSIS and the law enforcement community said at the consultation I attended that (a) all modern equipment has lawful access capabilities (due to US law), although it may require a license fee to activate it and (b) no investigations had been thwarted by a lack of lawful access capability.
I got the impression then and now that this was really about law enforcement not wanting to have to pay for wiretaps.
and if they did have to pay
and if they did have to pay, it would show up somewhere and thus allow a level of accountability that its being done, instead follow american style bush antics and try and hide everything and when a mistake does and will happen us the tax payers will get screwed bigtime.
once again intelligence isn’t part of CSIS or our gov’t.
sorry if htis double posted
and if they did have to pay
and if they did have to pay, it would show up somewhere and thus allow a level of accountability that its being done, instead follow american style bush antics and try and hide everything and when a mistake does and will happen us the tax payers will get screwed bigtime.
once again intelligence isn’t part of CSIS or our gov’t.
As Above
CSIS and the RCMP are dreaming in Technicolour if they think that they’re going to get even a small fraction of this kind of Orwellian snooping infrastructure installed by the Canadian telcos, particularly if they expect telcos like the one for which I work, to foot the bill.
The reality of the situation is that most telco networks are so large and complex that few if any of the owning organization’s technical staff really understand how the whole thing works. In order for an infrastructure like this to work at even a low level of efficiency, it would have to have active taps on every router, server, switch, gateway and firewall that the telco or ISP uses.
The cost to implement something like this would be enormous, and this is without even considering the practical issues surrounding its management, like:
(1.) Who at the telco has to be informed, for the tap to be turned on? (Note that if it’s ALWAYS on, then by definition we have pervasive, warrantless surveillance, of the precise type that the government has promised never to force on the industry.) Is it just the technician managing the router / switch, the President of the telco, or someone in between?
(2.) What happens if the law enforcement tap starts interfering with the normal operation of the equipment? Whose priorities go first, those of keeping the network running or those of accommodating the spooks? How would you decide?
(3.) Is anyone at all interested in the fact that most IT Security audit standards (for example SAS70, ISO 17799, COBiT, NIST, etc.) specifically prohibit “backdoor” communication channels on network equipment? How would you explain something like this to a third party audit firm who comes to see that your network is secure?
It’s an insane idea, one cooked up by police officers who have no idea of how a REAL Canadian telecommunications company (as opposed to their fantasy idea of one) operates. I suppose they can try to force it down our throats, but it won’t work. I just hope everyone understands that.
A Canadian Telco Security Dweeb