9.8.1. "What is Digital Telephony?"
- The Digital Telephony Bill, first proposed under Bush and
again by Clinton, is in many ways much worse than Clipper.
It has gotten less attention, for various reasons.
- For one thing, it is seen as an extension by some of
existing wiretap capabilities. And, it is fairly abstract,
happening behind the doors of telephone company switches.
- The implications are severe: mandatory wiretap and pen
register (who is calling whom) capaibilities, civil
penalties of up to $10,000 a day for insufficient
compliance, mandatory assistance must be provided, etc.
- If it is passed, it could dictate future technology. Telcos
who install it will make sure that upstart technologies
(e.g., Cypherpunks who find ways to ship voice over
computer lines) are also forced to "play by the same
rules." Being required to install government-accessible tap
points even in small systems would of course effectively
destroy them.
- On the other hand, it is getting harder and harder to make
Digital Telephony workable, even by mandate. As Jim
Kallstrom of the FBI puts it: ""Today will be the cheapest
day on which Congress could fix this thing," Kallstrom
said. "Two years from now, it will be geometrically more
expensive."" [LAN Magazine,"Is it 1984?," by Ted Bunker,
August 1994]
- This gives us a goal to shoot for: sabotage the latest
attempt to get Digital Telephony passed into law and it may
make it too intractable to *ever* be passed.
+ "Today will be the cheapest day on which
- Congress could fix this thing," Kallstrom said. "Two
years from now,
- it will be geometrically more expensive."
- The message is clear: delay Digital Telephony. Sabotage it
in the court of public opinion, spread the word, make it
flop. (Reread your "Art of War" for Sun Tsu's tips on
fighting your enemy.)
-
9.8.2. "What are the dangers of the Digital Telephony Bill?"
- It makes wiretapping invisible to the tappee.
+ If passed into law, it makes central office wiretapping
trivial, automatic.
- "What should worry people is what isn't in the news (and
probably never will until it's already embedded in comm
systems). A true 'Clipper' will allow remote tapping on
demand. This is very easily done to all-digital
communications systems. If you understand network routers
and protocol it's easy to envision how simple it would be
to 're-route' a copy of a target comm to where ever you
want it to go..." [domonkos@access.digex.net (andy
domonkos), comp.org.eff.talk, 1994-06-29]
9.8.3. "What is the Digital Telephony proposal/bill?
- proposed a few years ago...said to be inspiration for PGP
- reintroduced Feb 4, 1994
- earlier versrion:
+ "1) DIGITAL TELEPHONY PROPOSAL
- "To ensure law enforcement's continued ability to conduct
court-
- authorized taps, the administration, at the request of
the
- Dept. of Justice and the FBI, proposed ditigal telephony
- legislation. The version submitted to Congress in Sept.
1992
- would require providers of electronic communication
services
- and private branch exchange (PBX) operators to ensure
that the
- government's ability to lawfully intercept communications
is not
- curtailed or prevented entirely by the introduction of
advanced
- technology."
By Tim May, see README
HTML by Jonathan Rochkind