Gosh, this sounds like CALLEA's mandates that US phone companies install wiretapping capability into every phone switch for 1% of domestic phonecalls simultaneously, so the IC through FBI can wiretap remotely from a desktop terminal. I'm not aware of any cryptographic access mechanism which requires a court authentication signature ala warrant, but they promise that they will get warrants before they conduct a tap, and after all, they're the federal government, so we can trust them, right? If someone can prove that FIB will be effectively unable to tap without a warrant using CALLEA-generated infrastructure, that's great, but otherwise it's no different from this alleged FSB measure, except that the Russians are a few years behind Amerikan "progress" in this matter. Congress gave the phone corps a stay of liberty execution of a couple of years, but the law's still there. -hedges- >Put this in the 'important if true' category: >http://www.jya.com/sorm-fsb-ru.htm > >----- > > >From: "Maksim Otstavnov" <maksimat_private> >To: cypherpunksat_private >Date: Thu, 25 Jun 1998 22:28:02 +0400 >Subject: SORM: New ex-KGB moves in telecom >CC: John Young <jyaat_private>, Chris Oakes <chrisoat_private> > >-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > >To whom it may concern: > >The text between [Start of translation] and [End of translation] lines below >is a verbatim translation of the two drafts of documents which are currently >in the state of approvement by the two Russian ministries: Federal Security >Service (FSB, one of the five special services inheriting to KGB) and State >Committee on Communications (Goskomsvyaz'). The originals (and comments) are >available at the Libertarium Webpages (www.ice.ru/libertarium/sorm). > >Inconsistencies of the original texts (including but not restrictive to: >paragraph misnumbering, language vagueness etc.) are left intact. I left the >two Russian abbreviations: SORM for the System of efficient research measures, >and FSB for the Federal Security Service, to avoid confusion in future. > >In short: if approved, the rules will provide ex-KGB with technical >facility to >_directly_ and covertly wiretap _any_ information transmitted via >telecommunication networks including telephone, telegraph, Internet etc. and >there will be no means to ensure KGBists obtained a court warrant (required by >Constitution and other federal legislation) before wiretapping. > >Any informed comments (of legal and technological, not emotional nature) from >both organisations and from individual experts are welcome. > >I am grateful to all involved with obtaining the documents. Hope some day I >will be in a position to mention them by their names... > >- - Maksim Otstavnov > >[reference the URL for the remainder of the document]
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Fri Apr 13 2001 - 13:09:52 PDT