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Oasis Forms "Lawful Intercept" XML Committee

Posted by Hemos on from the what-the-hobbes-is-that dept.

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."

5 of 96 comments (clear)

  1. ISP and Phone Logs... by terrencefw · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ...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/
    1. Re:ISP and Phone Logs... by HiThere · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It seems that I've heard of several cases where no court order was obtained. The ISP was merely "requested" to cooperate. Well, it wasn't THEIR data. So they forked it over without compulsion, compunction, notification, or reason demanded.

      Now they weren't legally obligated to do this. They could have held out for a warrant. But why should they? So they didn't.

      Now one doesn't know how often this happens, as one only hears about it when:
      1) It's used in court records
      2) It's a slow news day, and
      3) Some reporter happens to think it might make a story.

      Of course, item 3 makes the whole argument dubious. (I've been at events that were later reported. ... Any similarity between what I saw and what was reported falls within 1 standard deviation of chance. [OK, so I exaggerate. But not that much.]) Still...

      I'm sure that most police do the best job they can for the good of the community. Nearly all of the time. And that it's quite dangerous. Spies and wiretappers aren't "most police". And frequently neither are those setting the priorities or legal interpretations. And in most organizations the folk that rise to the top tend to be those that are most interested in rising to the top, not those most interested in doing a good job.

      But you're right. There tends to be a requirement to provide a kind of quid-pro-quo to get a favor out of the government. Like approval for a new service. This doesn't mean that it's in the best interest of the citizenry, or even of the government, but the people who run approval processes display their status by exercising control. And this has to look at least halfway reasonable (if only so they aren't ashamed of themselves). And controllers love new fields to be controlled. So I can easily see why they would insist on "lawful intercept". (I might be dubious about it's constitutionality, but I doubt that the courts would be...I'm conservative in that way.)

      As to how this will be used...
      Cell phones are required to carry GSM transponders. I don't know whether they are live if the power is switched off (I suspect they aren't, as my battery lasts a long time). But this kind of standard format allows real-time tracking of what is already a large fragment of the population, and will probably soon expand to nearly everyone. And if batteries improve, then they'll probably adopt an "always on" approach rather like the latest desktop computers, where the power switch doesn't actually turn the thing off.

      "Fight enabling technology"? That's not precisely the problem. We currently have the potential for more technologies than we can imagine. We select which ones we develop. By our choices, we are determining a part of the texture of the future that we will encounter. (And, yes, I do find this one quite dubious.)

      --

      I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
  2. Hey kids! by Nemus · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Come on everybody, grab your Buzzword Bingo cards, and lets play the game!

    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.
  3. Open standards by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    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.

  4. Cops by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful
    Did you miss the LAWFUL interception part? There are plenty of good reasons to tap phones, rooms and net traffic.

    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.