[VOIPSEC] An issue of trust?

[Randell Jesup]

"Andre Fucs de Miranda" <afucs-listas at mandicmail.com> writes:
>First of all I would make a remark. Adding and SBC doesn't means that you
>"add a point of failure". 

Even with redundancy, there are affects on the reliability, which is more
than just failover.  (Packet loss, backhoes cutting fiber, and then delay
issues.)

>Despite the facts above, you should also remember that SBCs are not the only
>way of deploying CALEA, their role is a requisite only when you cannot
>provide it through other ways.

And that's part of why CALEA is innappropriate for technologies that don't
fit it well.  The argument on the other side is "if it doesn't fit well
CALEA, that's too bad, don't do it" - i.e. outlaw the technology.  The FCC
in general appears fine with making rules that create defacto huge barriers
to entry or large (in the end consumer-paid) costs - not just in this case,
but in other cases too.  And the federal law enforcement people would love
to be able to go to one or two spots and get all the surveillance they
want, with minimal effort.  And less effort makes it easier to justify
using the ability.

>Regarding cost, I guess that most of the VoIP players are going to be pushed
>out of the market not because of CALEA but through fraud, rates and other
>business related issues.

Actually, SBCs for IP-to-IP calls (due to CALEA) forces a (fairly high)
lower bound on the costs for a "service provider", compared to a provider
who basically provides a SIP server and ENUM.  Skype (so far) avoids that
cost, but if they're forced to implement CALEA (and right now due to
SkypeIn/Out I assume they will be), they'll be forced into using them.
However, they might be able to avoid using them for all calls due to the
user (with a sniffer) being unable to tell if they're calls are being
proxied by a Skype-owned SBC or a random user supernode (though if you make
enough calls and do enough traceroutes, I'm pretty sure you could still
figure it out).

-- 
Randell Jesup, Worldgate (developers of the Ojo videophone), ex-Amiga OS team
rjesup at wgate.com
"The fetters imposed on liberty at home have ever been forged out of the weapons
provided for defence against real, pretended, or imaginary dangers from abroad."
		- James Madison, 4th US president (1751-1836)