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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (62415)	12/20/2002 2:27:45 AM
From: D. Long	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

I really don't see what is being proposed. If anyone thinks you can snoop on the Internet like you can the phone networks, they're in for a nasty headache when it comes to figuring out implementation. If they are proposing some sort of disaster planning for attacks on networks, that doesn't require any sort of wire tappish tactics. If they're worried about virii, they should be knocking on Microsoft's door, because it is a software and user stupidity issue, not a network issue. ::shrug:: Very short on details in the article. Derek

To: LindyBill who wrote (62415)	12/20/2002 5:25:45 AM
From: D. Long	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Upon second reading Bill, this sounds harmless. It reads like the Feds want to do a big version of what every ISP already does for their own networks - monitor traffic. The article makes a number of references that make me believe this is harmless, even potentially quite beneficial: the reference to the Critical Infrastructure Protection Board, network operations center, guage overall state of network, etc. Any ISP larger than a mom and pop shop has a NOC (network operations center) which monitors network bandwidth usage and other metrics by "polling" routers and putting the info together into pretty little graphs. Then network guys sit around and watch the graphs and pick out the telltale signs of trouble. That's what I did when I worked at UUNET. Here's a little example of some MRTG graphs: stat.ee.ethz.ch So what it sounds like, is the Feds want to put together a public/private venture that would be like a whole-Internet NOC, sort of like a big traffic monitoring center that could see the Big Picture and hopefully pick up on attacks on the network as they happen. That can be done by only monitoring certain network and transport layer data "traps" configured at the major hub routers. It would be impossible to monitor user level application data in this fashion because it isn't conducive to graphing, routers don't peek that deep into packets, and if they just wanted to dump everything going over the network they run into the practical impossibilities I raised earlier. I hope this is all that is being proposed. Fairly innocuous. Derek

To: LindyBill who wrote (62415)	12/20/2002 6:42:32 AM
From: Dennis O'Bell	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

OT - JPAO : The John Poindexter Awareness Office breakyourchains.org

To: LindyBill who wrote (62415)	12/20/2002 9:34:17 AM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

911 finally gives the anti-privacy types an opportunity to pry into our internet lives. I'm curious just what you think about this, Bill. I read it this morning and planned to post it to you later today. I can't tell, given the brevity of the article, whether this particular step is a serious one or not. But I would think the libertarians would be worried. Certainly this poster's libertarian side is worried. It's a step in the wrong direction. If it were framed as making the internet a more virus free zone, who could object. But it's put in the context of the "war on terrorism" which is to say getting, eventually, down to the level of the ability to track all our internet ruminations. Goodbye this privacy, if that's where it goes. So what say you?