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Oasis Forms "Lawful Intercept" XML Committee
An anonymous reader writes "Oasis has announced the formation of the Lawful Intercept XML Technical Committee. The announcement refers to it as a "universal global framework for supporting rapid discovery and sharing of suspected criminal and terrorist evidence by law enforcement agencies." It's not really clear if this is supposed to aid in information exchange about suspicious activities/individuals, or 'intercepting' in the sense of eavesdropping, or what exactly."
There current album, "Standing on the Shoulder of Giants" is out stores now.
I had no idea Liam and Noel were XML literate. THAT'S why you can't understand Noel... he hasn't released his DTD.
-Mark
...is what this is all about. Packaging ISP and cellphone data up into a nice easily-datamined format for law enforcers. Just what your average man in the street wants done with his data.
Like tinyurl, but one letter less! http://qurl.co.uk/
At first I thought this had to do something with Microsoft's new ISA server's ability to "firewall" XML content...ah, the idea of a server that can spy on service content....hmm, didnt we already have echelon for this??
So now terrorists are supposed to use valid XML (with respect to the approved Bin Laden DTD) to arrange bombings and the such. This is a natural step forward since XML is easier to parse and to detect by law enforcement agencies... This IS a joke, right?
On the other hand, for those of you, like me, who have just woken up, a translation is provided below:
[translation]"We're gonna, um, do some security stuff, because, uh, security is cool, and uh, terrorism, is like, bad. We don't know what we're going to do yet, though. Or how. Or why. But, ummm......dude this is some good shit *sniiiiiiiifffffff*"[/translation]
Sorry for the sarcasm, but any press release that takes up three pages, and could be summarised into thirty words, deserves to be mocked shamlessly. Mod me down, it needed to be said!!
Mod Points: Helping you keep your opinion to yourself.
The whole point of XML is to be extensible to store any kind of information. For my money, this is better than having it stored in some opaque proprietary database format.
It's also a lot easier to hack and change at will, if that's your bag.
Have fun.
Suspected criminal: Anyone.
It appears that when you combine lawyers and XML you end up with a linguistic quagmire that is completely impossible for mere mortals to comprehend, or escape from.
It's Slashdot's evil twin... SlashNOT
Why don't they simply download Kazaa? It has been proven to be very usefull for sharing all kinds of information, no matter where and how one got it.
giel.y contains 2 shift/reduce conflicts
I didn't realize the band was so techno-savy. I loved the song "Wonderwall".
...we predict a resurgence of interest in CSV files among diabolical masterminds everywhere.
Just wondering whether this really has anything to do with XML... if so, should it? Not sure when a data structure last had its own universal global framework for supporting rapid discovery and sharing of suspected criminal and terrorist evidence by law enforcement agencies but I suppose this counts as progress of a kind, though personally I think I'd sleep better if the authorities kept an eye on all manifestations of Directed Acyclic Graphs.
... I haven't read the article, life is too short, but at aguess this is a badly worded way of saying that they want to set up an international standard XML-based database for the storage and retrieval of information about known or suspected criminals/terrorists/rogue states/.
Of course, I'm protected by my foil beanie so even if I'm wrong, they can't get me!
OASIS Members to Create Framework for Global Sharing of Criminal and Terrorist Evidence XML Specification Will Deliver Reliable Authentication and Auditing to Safeguard Privacy and Increase Effectiveness of Lawful Intercepts. That sounds pretty clear to me.
Neither the KGB nor the STASI had much in the way of computer power to process the information gathered and the legal procedures were manual. What is happening here is that one of the last brakes to quick intercepts is being removed. The bottleneck connected with the approval process made law enforcement types think before ordering an intercept: Do they really need it?
It will be possible for intercepts to be implemeneted with less controls and far faster than in Soviet Russia).
See my journal, I write things there
--
Film at 11.
If you people had a cop in the family or for a friend, you'd know that they the vast majority of them aren't nightsticking thugs or hellbent on invading your privacy. Yes, if you dig deep enough you will always find dirt and there are always a few rotten apples in the basket. However, that applies to doctors, lawyers, system administrators, coders, janitors and to any other profession as well.
The only good thing about the formation of the Department of Homeland Security is that it will set back by years the attempts of individual government agencies to spy on US citizens.
"We figure there will be benefits to helping out law enforcement, so it's jumping on the bandwagon time."
After cutting through the buzzwords and acronyms, thats all I could really get out of this article.
Now, how long until there are copycat activities claiming better methods, more efficiency? Watch as various security consultants have yet another bag of tricks to bring out to sell their services.
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
What this appears to be is XML so that the authorities can trade information they gather via intercept, much like businesses communicate with each other via XML. I suppose the idea is to get law enforcement people using a common markup convention, to get them all on the same page. Not a bad idea, it seems to me.
After reading the announcement and a couple of the links off it, this sounds more like an XML standard that law enforcement agencies and legal departments can use to send each other information during an investigation - not something they'd foist on the general public to make it easier for government to spy on us.
All opinions expressed herein are not my own; I haven't had free will since last year when aliens ate my brain.
Are they Gods that desparately need to lose weight?
All my own emphasisising...
"XML Specification Will Deliver Reliable Authentication and Auditing to Safeguard Privacy and Increase Effectiveness of Lawful Intercepts"
So they're coming up with a standard to protect your data and make it available? Nice.
Roll up, roll up, get yer snake oil!
If you read between the lines, they mention protecting privacy while enhancing the ability to do legal interception...
Between all the happy-speak this sounds a bit sinister. Could this modification to the XML standard be the software equivalent of the clipper chip?
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
Dw
I'm sitting here trying to convince myself to use DocBook for my next book and finding it very difficult to justify it as anything other than an intriguing intellectual exercise.
XML sounds great when you're in the planning stages of a big project, but once you get into the details it seems to make even simple tasks more complex than they need to be. It's tempting to go for it if you're the only one on the project, but a complex project rarely fits that criteria. Trying to keep everyone on the same page when you're working with people who are only going to be doing small parts is tough unless everybody understands the big picture and that in itself becomes a major hurdle.
The sample xml uses the Poindexters' home phone log.
(urk)
I suppose there will be a click through agreement:
"I agree not to use this technology to spy on CEOs to determine when to sell my stock. I also agree not to use this technology to spy on my SO, neighbors, or to get juicy blackmail bits on the person who cut me off this morning on the way to work."
Of course, with the FBI's proven track record, they'll just hit I Agree and do it anyway.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
You mean a Spelling committ
This one needs a spelling rollback...
Considered harmful.
What amazes me is that the Department of Homeland Security seems to be a much bigger beauracracy than any of the agencies that it is "swallowing", yet it's being built by an administration that sells itself as anti-big-government. {Emphasis added by me}
...Seriously, I swear half the people on /. have at least a mild case of Asperger's Syndrome.
Correction... it is being built by an administration that sold itself as anti-big-government. See, there was this thing that happened called 9/11 and a lot of people shifted their positions on a lot of things. Its not like this is a big secret and its not like you are going to inspire outrage or shock by pointing out that DHS is big government.
I would have to say that explosives are the most abused technology in all of history.
So what, are they going to have a catch terrorism web service? In any case, it's good to see the government fighting terrorism.
Karma: Bad (mostly affected by being such an asshole)
if the FBI and CIA had the authority to intercept e-mails using the [terrorist] XML tag.
Curse you liberals and your "bill of rights"! How many more people have to die before you let go of your precious "freedoms"?
I, for one, am glad that they are giving us the opportunity to properly form our incriminating evidence against ourselves. I was convinced that I would need to come up with my own file spec for that.
There is an example for what such a specification might look like. The second pdf document (in English) is especially interesting as it gives some rather technical details of how the surveillence data must be structured (XML) and encrypted (PGP) before sending it to the Swiss authorities.
folks , ddos with xml
So rather then strengthing privacy laws to protect my freedom and liberty the powers that be decided to circumvent the courts' warrent process.
Why not minimum 12 years for gathering and using information from online activities, period. Few opportunities allow for the foresight of "putting up the stop sign before the accident" and this may one of them.
I first spotted the concept of XML based digital "warants" to request the real-time tapping of intercepted ip traffic in the dutch ISP tapping debate. Politicians called for what they called "lawfull interception"(a link?). A standard whas proposed, I believe by university students. I can`t find this spec among related documents(great technical site, has various versions of the specs for transporting intercepted traffic from isp`s to central tapping rooms).
This spec proposed the use of xml documents to transfer the acount details of isp clients that police officials wanted tapped to the tapping system instaled at isp`s. The spec didn`t include any technical provisions for digitally signing these warrants (say, by a judge and noone else) as the idea was that the police would bring them to the isp by hand on cd`s. It would make sense if the spec whas worked out not to make it posible for cops without technical experiance to tell the tapping box what to tap, but, to make it easy to send the warrant to the tapping machine by the net nice and automated from a central tapping room like the ones used for telephone tapping. Ofourse the lacking of digital signatures shows the priorities of the original designers of this spec (easy automation, easy implementation for tapping system vendors (isp`s where complaining about the costs) and the use of cool gimicky standards)
The technical debate on how to tap internet users has been going on (although it has died down now isp got the money and the police got their new toy, at least in the Netherlands), but what makes the frequent popping up of XML interesting is the idea that it "smells" like automation, posible lage scale, of the tapping requests. In its self a great idea, less chance to end up tapping the wrong users just becouse a cop couldn`t remeber a dial in username. But it also has a dark side, its a smaller step to tap (a very small one if the tapping box at an isp doesn`t need a signature from a judge just like carnivore), but what if the police cant decrypt the traffic going from a tapped host to another, or if they think an other hoste is probably very suspicious indeed ver likely terrorists material? Well the first host is a very dangerous terrorist anyway, lets tap host-2 TO!, and then when the terrorists is in an encrypted p2p net how do you know what all those other hosts are up to? I know let automate the proces of requesting a tap on the comunication partners of the host we where orginally investigating!
tapping the net is just like tapping phones, now stop complaining and come and help us catch some terrorists, you know you want to, they are *evil* after all!
SPECIAL INVESTIGATION: ILETS AND THE ENFOPOL 98 AFFAIR
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Trusted Computing FAQ | Free Dawit Isaak!
I guess hope is that increased efficiency will lead to increased efficacy. Problem being that in a lot of these domains, it is often the inefficiency itself that puts a throttle on abuse.
Frank Herbert has something interesting to say about this.
And the shelters don't cave We will "standardise" it into XML And send Osama to his grave!