[119013] in Cypherpunks
IETF considers building wiretapping into the Internet
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Declan McCullagh)
Tue Oct 12 18:26:04 1999
Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 18:07:09 -0400
To: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
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Message-Id: <19991012220749.JTJU24372@alaptop.hotwired.com>
Reply-To: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,31853,00.html
Wiretapping the Net: Oh, Brother
by Declan McCullagh (declan@wired.com)
2:00 p.m. 12.Oct.99.PDT
Since its humble beginnings as a
15-person committee in 1986, the
Internet Engineering Task Force has had
one guiding principle: To solve the
problems of moving digital information
around the world.
As attendance at meetings swelled and
the Internet became a vital portion of
national economies, the
standards-setting body has become
increasingly important, but the engineers
and programmers who are members
remained focused on that common goal.
No longer.
The IETF is now debating whether to wire
government surveillance into the next
generation of Internet protocols. The
issue promises to cause the most
acrimonious debate the venerable group
has ever experienced and could have a
lasting effect on privacy online.
To reach even a preliminary decision in a
special plenary session of the IETF
meeting in Washington next month,
attendees must weigh whether law
enforcement demands are more important
than communications security and
personal privacy -- a process that places
technology professionals in the unusual
position of taking a prominent political
stand.
"As Internet voice becomes a wider
deployed reality, it is only logical that the
subject has to come up," IETF chairman
Fred Baker said. "We are deciding to bring
it up proactively rather than reacting to
something later in the game."
[...]
