It all depends on who's doing the sniffing, why they are sniffing, and what data is being sniffed (i.e., headers or payload). For example, the ECPA prohibits the interception/disclosure of email, but there are exemptions for a provider if it's necessary to protect the org's resources. Wiretap laws apply to the police only, not to citizens. WRT police, it depends on if you're state/federal, is it a national security matter or not, if you're state police -- is there a state law, if you're a fed. -- will simple headers do or do you need payload as well. For example, federal officials can sniff a network with a simple trap and trace order so long as they only look at headers and not at the content/payload. < paul Crumrine, Gary L" writes: > After wearing out my fingers during a heated conversation with another > colleague over legalities of certain actions, a question came up in my mind > concerning sniffers and their usage. > > If a sniffer was placed on the outside of a given network, and was > configured to sniff packets coming from that network only, does this > constitute an illegal wire tap? And do the same rules apply to data as they > do voice? In some cases it transits the same copper wire... ouch I am > getting a headache.. >
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Fri Apr 13 2001 - 13:58:00 PDT