Re: Monitoring, Flow Stats (Re: spam whore, norcal-systems)

[Dean Anderson <dean () av8 com>]

At 06:16 PM 2/1/1999 -0500, Jared Mauch wrote:
>       Interesting coroloary,
>
>       Is it illegal for me to do flow-stats, as that examines packets
> (in the same way one would filter), causing this data to be stored on
> my flow stats server?

If you read the statute, it permits monitoring for quality control
purposes, which your flowstats are.  

There is no exception in 2511 for what Ravi did.  Does Verio often reveal
confidential information about their customers' customers traffic?  I
wonder how Verio's ISP customers/peers feel about that.  I know I wouldn't
be happy if UUnet or BBN thought they could capture and publish my
customers packets.  My customers include insurance and health care (privacy
intensive) companies. They would be very unhappy if we used someone who had
this attitude.

The anti-spammers usually claim the abuse exception as justification for
instituting a block.  Its their best (though still flimsy) argument.  Its
flimsy since the congress has the authority to regulate or ban spam, and
the congress did pass laws banning junk faxes, and limiting calls to cell
phones, yet they have not yet banned spam.  Nor has any court found spam by
itself to be an abuse. The one spam related law that was before the
congress would have placed some requirements on spammers, but would have
made it specifically not an abuse for 2511.  In other words, the congress
doesn't agree with the anti-spammers.

                --Dean 
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           Plain Aviation, Inc                  dean () av8 com
           LAN/WAN/UNIX/NT/TCPIP          http://www.av8.com
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