Presence and IntComm WG

[Jamey Hicks <>]

Jeremy George wrote:

>  Following up on why the PIC group should care about the social
> context of PIC/ALS, there is an article in today's NY Times telling
> us the FCC is poised to approve a notice of proposed rulemaking in
> re VoIP.  The third paragraph reads:
>
>      "The commission scheduled this week's proceedings after the
>       Justice Department reversed its earlier position that anything
>       less than stringent regulations would pose legal and
>       technical obstacles to the ability of law enforcement agencies
>       to do wiretapping for criminal and terrorism investigagtions."
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/09/technology/09rules.html
>
>  
Interesting. Corporate use of VOIP is going to require secure RTP or 
VPN, which would make wiretapping rather difficult.  I think that many 
users of VOIP would prefer to protect the content of their 
conversations.  It may be difficult to produce an architecture that 
provides for legal wiretapping while meeting the needs of users.  This 
is going to be an interesting sociotechnological tussle.

Jamey