[49112] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: packet inspection and privacy
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (David Charlap)
Tue Jun 25 10:10:04 2002
Date: Tue, 25 Jun 2002 10:09:57 -0400
From: David Charlap <david.charlap@marconi.com>
To: nanog@merit.edu
Errors-To: owner-nanog-outgoing@merit.edu
Steven M. Bellovin wrote:
> Mark Kent writes:
>>
>> I recently claimed that, in the USA, there is a law that prohibits an
>> ISP from inspecting packets in a telecommunications network for
>> anything other than traffic statistics or debugging.
>>
>> Was I correct?
>
> No. Or at least you weren't; the Patriot Act may have changed it.
> (I assume you're talking about U.S. law.)
>
> There was a quirk in the wording of the law -- what you say is correct
> for *telephone* companies, but not ISPs.
You're referring to "common carrier" status, I think.
This isn't exclusively restricted to phone companies, but that's the way
it is right now. I think it may also apply to non-voice carriers that
sell circuits. I'm pretty certain that it does not apply to ISPs.
A common carrier is not allowed to monitor/filter traffic on customer
circuits. They also can't be held responsible for the traffic on those
circuits.
-- David
