More on Cisco Building Surveillance into Routers

An anonymous reader writes "The company recently published a proposal that describes how it plans to embed 'lawful interception' capability into its products. Among the highlights: Eavesdropping 'must be undetectable,' and multiple police agencies conducting simultaneous wiretaps must not learn of one another. If an Internet provider uses encryption to preserve its customers' privacy and has access to the encryption keys, it must turn over the intercepted communications to police in a descrambled form." See our earlier story and the RFC for background.

Comments

Re:I don't see what the big deal is.

[Tackhead]

> You might want to ask Scott Ritter [nydailynews.com] about a misdemeanor "sealed" arrest record that strangely became public knowledge after he publicly criticized recent Iraq policies.

Ah, but that cuts both ways.

You might also wonder - particularly given the nature of the offence - just why a certain individual went from being a highly-regarded UN weapons inspector into being an ardent denier of the existence of WMD in Iraq and one of the Iraqi regime's most strident supporters.

You might wonder if it had anything to do with, say, visits involving inspections at Iraqi childrens' prisons and orphanages.

You might Google for the sexual practices of family members of a certain Iraqi dictator.

You might wonder about the propensity of a certain Iraqi dictator to employ large armies of people to act as "Inspector Plods" and perform counterintelligence work in order to pre-emptively compromise any potential threats.

You might even conclude that a certain former UN Weapons Inspector's leaked arrest record answers more questions than it raises.

Or you might not.

Re:I don't see what the big deal is.

[Tackhead]

> You might wonder whether the above constitutes slander and libel.

Actually, that's the one thing I didn't wonder about - there's a world of difference between saying (1)"X happened", (2) "I believe X happened", (3) "I think X might have happened", and (4) "I wonder if X happened".

Assuming "X" didn't happen, then only statements of the form #1 are libel. #2 is a grey area.

Legally, I made sure my post was #4, and frankly, my honest opinion is somewhere between #3 and #4. #3 is even too strong - because I don't know.

Neither do you. Only Mr. Ritter and/or Iraqi intelligence can answer that question, and Ritter has right not to talk about it, and Iraqi intelligence ain't in a position to talk.

It is an observable fact that his opinion on Iraq changed pretty dramatically over a very short time period. It's also a known fact that the "honey trap" is a time-honored counterintelligence gambit employed by regimes both despotic and free alike.

It's IMO logical to question what sorts of things may have motivated such a change. You raise another possibility - that there were indeed no WMDs, or at least that Ritter honestly believed there were no WMDs.

But getting back to the original point - my main purpose in posting wasn't so much to cast aspersons on Mr. Ritter's character, but to point out that surveillance is a two-edged sword: Iraqi officials, had they known about Mr. Ritter's sexual peculiarities, had as much to gain from exploiting Ritter's natural desire to keep it hidden ("Drink this warm cup STFU on how we blocked your inspections, or we'll leak this to destroy your credibility!"), as US officials had to gain by leaking it ("He didn't take our warm cup of STFU on the way we think he was wrong on the WMD issue, so we'll... leak this to destroy his credibility").

Moral of the story: If you're in a politically-sensitive job, or think you might be, keep your frickin' nose clean. *G*