[Chapter-delegates] (no subject)

[Fred Baker]

I am blind-copying the members of chapter-delegates on this, as I am  
actually not trying to start a conversation on chapter-delegates, but  
would like the comments of the folks on that list.

Martin Kupres asked me to put together a member briefing on Lawful  
Intercept. I do know a little about the technology, law, and police  
use, as I have been working in the field for some time now. I have  
put together a note, which you will find at ftp://ftpeng.cisco.com/ 
fred/isoc/LI-breifing.html. This is the second draft version, and I  
expect what I give to Martin will be the third or fourth.

The purpose of a member briefing is, in short, to educate the reader,  
and help the reader understand and hopefully support the position it  
proposes. In this case, I would expect that ISOC chapters are in  
conversations with public officials, and might find such a breifing  
to be useful guidance, and perhaps useful to leave directly with the  
official. I personally would like to say "ISOC thinks that Lawful  
Intercept is a profoundly bad idea and nobody should even think about  
deploying it". That statement, however, puts ISOC not in the position  
of a trusted advisor, but in the position of an advocate, and to be  
very honest, an advocate for a position that is not going to succeed  
any time soon. Rather than advocating an irrelevant position and  
therefore choosing irrelevance, I try to make very practical  
observations on what is easy, what is hard, what is practical, what  
is infeasible, and in the end make recommendations that make sense.

I would appreciate your comments. I would like to know what questions  
you are left with that you would like to see answered, and english- 
language statements are difficult for those for whom english is a  
second language, what is belabored and could be simplified or left  
out, and what it not adequately explained. I would like the comments  
to be private to me.

Thanks much.