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Comment by jpollock | Hacker News Reader

How about the requirement that foreign carriers have US citizens in US offices at the point of interconnect with the US.

I also believe there are reporting oddities in the role too, but I can't find the reference to it anymore.

The result is that same as China, the difference is who's paying the person's salary.

Edit [information below]:

[1] (13) Carriers shall comply with the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), see 47 C.F.R. §§ 1.20000 et seq. Page 5 of 6 1.20000 et seq.

[2] (14) Every carrier must designate an agent for service in the District of Columbia. See 47 U.S.C. § 413, 47 C.F.R. §§ 1.47(h), 64.1195.

[3] https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DA-15-348A1.pd...

Not that ominous, just normal legal intercept. The US has had this requirement for a long time.

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For those who don't know much about CALEA here is a short article from an industry rag[0] and a more technical document on a specific solution by Cisco[1]

[0] https://insidersurveillance.com/calea-solutions-should-you-b...

[1] http://www.cisco.com/web/about/security/intelligence/LI-3GPP...

It's not the same as China. China is putting police in local (Chinese) companies with Chinese citizens in Chinese companies. That's kind of different than requiring a citizen in the office of a foreign company doing business locally.

I expect that the intent is different, although I don't know US law. The Chinese intent is to (forcibly?) prevent unwanted communication. I doubt that is the intent of the US law.

Actually, CALEA [2] is a requirement for all US carriers (ISPs/telcos), it's just an extra requirement on anyone peering with a US firm. It's also been around since 1994.

CALEA intercepts are implemented through automated systems, the judge signs a warrant, it's entered into a computer and the wiretaps are done automatically, with the traffic routed to the requesting agency's systems.

In China, they probably noticed that they don't have a legal intercept facility built in, and don't want to spend the time to negotiate with all of the interested parties. So, they put a person on site.

The threat and the outcome is the same. If you don't provide legal intercept, you're going to get locked up.

For an example of what level of access these systems provide, a Greek carrier was hacked through theirs - the hacker(s) turned it on and used it to listen in on the Prime Minister's phone calls[1].

I'm not saying that the Chinese are doing the right thing, just that it's largely equivalent to what happens here.

[1] http://spectrum.ieee.org/telecom/security/the-athens-affair

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Assistance_for_...

Intercepts with warrants is really, really different than giving unaccountable thought police a desk in the news room. Equating these things is silly and borderline offensive.

Right, Europe is just as bad as China as well.

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