Presence and IntComm WG

[Jeremy George <>]

Hi Michael,

  Presence isn't the issue.  The separation of signalling from media
in SIP is the issue and it is as you suggest.  This has been known for
a long time.  The only practical way to implement something like SLEM
would be to put it in the NG L2 hardware.  Seems a stretch to me.

  The basic problem is, again as you suggest, that "wire tap" is an
artifact of a legacy technology and doesn't map well to the Internet.
A better approach, albeit a harder one, is to go back to the investigative
function and look for a genuine translation to a packet-switched
environment.  I'd suggest that the DoJ start looking into writing some
creative software of their own.

- Jeremy


On Tue, 20 Sep 2005, E. Michael Staman wrote:

> Date: Tue, 20 Sep 2005 08:34:09 -0400
> From: E. Michael Staman 
> <>
> Reply-To: 
>
> To: 
>
> Subject: [wg-pic] CALEA Question
>
>
>
> All -
>
>
>
> As some of you know, I've been lurking on this list since the days before
> the working group's initial formation a few years ago.
>
>
>
> In the ICS working group the CALEA-compliance issue is currently a hot topic
> - how to respond to the planned ruling that all of higher education install
> standardized equipment (buy CALEA compliant switches and routers) to
> facilitate law enforcement's  wiretaps of IP networks. CALEA compliant
> equipment allows them to tap from a remote location after having obtained
> and served a warrant to the equipment owners (in this case the campus).
> Under the original CALEA we were exempt from having CALEA compliant
> telephone equipment because we were considered a private network and private
> networks were exempt.  This is apparently no longer going to be the case,
> although there will be appeals to the courts which might reverse things.
> The discussion ranges from "this is a simple software fix" on the part of
> some, to "this is an $18.5 million dollar problem" on the part of a highly
> respected Big-10 university.
>
>
>
> Here is my question.  If I understand the approximately 10% of the mail that
> I've been able to read on the list, then the concept of presence makes CALEA
> compliance a  practical  impossibility.  Specifically, the problem would be
> insoluble because, in the SIP space there is no technology which, even when
> alerted, could "listen" to a SIP call from remote site "A" to remote site
> "B."   That is, since there is no way to predict the future location of a
> voice or other type of call by a bad guy, it becomes physically impossible
> for justice to identify a location to tap because, unlike the cellular
> infrastructure, there are no hooks to listen remotely even though sufficient
> data is probably available via the registration process to actually identify
> a target when a communication is initiated.  It can't be done, short of
> insisting that every institution of higher education install a
> yet-to-be-developed capability to capture streams of bits remotely from
> another institution, and further requiring every other institution to permit
> them both to do so and to install the necessary hooks to make it possible -
> apparently in the 8-figure range in some cases.
>
>
>
> Or perhaps I misunderstand - possibly completely.  Can anybody comment on
> the above questions?
>
>
>
> Thanks.
>
>
>
>  -- Mike
>
>
>
> --------------------------------------------------------
>
> E. Michael Staman
>
> Peyton Anderson Professor in Information Technology
>
> Macon State College
>
> 100 College Station Drive, Macon, GA 31206-5144
>
> 478-757-3661