Subject: [sipcore] Legal controls over sip signaling

From: Paul Kyzivat <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 27 Feb 2012 13:09:57 -0500

[I've changed the subject to reflect what we are discussing]

Richard,

This is interesting, and I think more discussion is appropriate on it. 
Its not clear where this discussion should take place - probably not 
dispatch. IMO sipcore is more suitable for the discussion. So I'm cross 
posting this but bcc'ing dispatch so that replies will go to sipcore. 
(Hopefully that will work. If it doesn't, please refrain from replying 
on dispatch.)

I don't understand how a legal restriction would work.

- would it be limited to regulated carriers?

- how would this apply to the interconnect of "private" devices
   or environments to the "public" sip infrastructure?

- would this be limited to identities that are E.164 numbers?
   Or would it include other sorts of identities?

- would this apply to interconnects between private infrastructures?
   (E.g. ViPR)

	Thanks,
	Paul

On 2/26/12 3:36 PM, Richard Shockey wrote:
>
>
> On 2/25/12 10:50 AM, Richard Shockey wrote:
>
>> Also, what is to prevent someone from forging SPIDs in a message?
>> [RS>   ]
>> [RS>   ] One of the principal use cases for a global SPID this is
>> International Interconnection of E.164 traffic or even domestic traffic in
>> some national jurisdictions. As for forging SPID's we have the same
> problem
>> with issues of Calling Number in one way SIP traffic over the PSTN in the
>> US. People do bad things. The prevention mechanism is national law or
>> regulation that defines what is in the headers and what cannot be modified
>> as it might transverse a all IP Interconnected network using E.164
>> identifiers. Its called fines and jail.
>
> There's a lot of callerid forging going on, and AFAIK nobody is going to
> jail for it.
> [RS>  ] Not yet , but given the level of screaming by the service providers
> on the fraudulent phantom traffic issue you can assume its coming.
>
> In what countries are there laws about what sip headers can go into a
> sip message?
> [RS>  ] Right now the issue is related to traffic in both the US and Canada
> but I would guess most of the PTT's are experiencing the same issue. The FCC
> order on USF/ICC reform is very specific on the requirement for non
> modification of charge number or calling party number in the signaling
> path.. aka the SIP headers when applicable.   A fair amount of this goes
> away with bill and keep but you can assume you'll see a bunch of new
> "requirements" be imposed as a transition to all SIP Interconnection for
> real time communications occurs over the next decade.
>
> 	Thanks,
> 	Paul
>
>

---

From: "Richard Shockey" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 27 Feb 2012 14:12:38 -0500

In line..

-----Original Message-----
From: Paul Kyzivat [mailto:[email-masked]] 
Sent: Monday, February 27, 2012 1:10 PM
To: Richard Shockey
Cc: SIPCORE
Subject: Legal controls over sip signaling

Richard,

[RS> ] Well remember I'm not a regulator or a lawyer and I never want to
play either on television. The PSTN as we know it is regulated everywhere.
Since we are going to transition to some SIP/IMS based core network for
essential real-time communications eventually then it's reasonable to assume
some oversight and probably some regulation will occur. If the rules were in
place and someone caught someone intentionally modifying the signaling to
commit fraud etc then they could be subject to sanction fines suspension of
license etc.  One more reason for CALLID track and trace.

- would it be limited to regulated carriers?
[RS> ] So what is a regulated carrier? :-)  That is not a simple question
depending on the relevant national law. 

- how would this apply to the interconnect of "private" devices
   or environments to the "public" sip infrastructure?
[RS> ] So again now you get to define what is the "public SIP"
infrastructure? E.164? :-) What kinds of private devices do you mean... the
Carterfone Decision?  Don't mention that to your mobile friends..

- would this be limited to identities that are E.164 numbers?
[RS> ] Now you have hit the key issue IMHO.  In order to properly segment
these things out into definable elements I would argue that if the signaling
deals with E.164 named endpoints you will see SIP signaling regulation. If
you are using other forms of identifiers probably not. 

It's a question of policy here. What is the Social Contract, if you want to
call it that, in the existing PSTN you actually want to preserve over time?
reliability, affordability, accessibility, ubiquity, QoS, universal service,
disability access, lawful intercept, etc.  If you have any of the above
goals you can argue about legal controls over the modification of SIP
signaling.  

Right now it's about billing using Calling Number etc. Remember Shockey's
law .."Money is the answer what is the question?"  The losses are piling up
and the usual suspects are not happy. And when the usual suspects are not
happy they make long tortured filings with the regulators. 

   Or would it include other sorts of identities?
[RS> ] It depends, but the general reluctance by regulators to interfere in
private name spaces is pretty well documented. The last time it was tried in
the US was with the forced federation of Instant Messaging as a condition of
the AOL/TW merger.  The result it was a total failure but that BTW also
exposes several issues. First IM is dying SMS is still growing by leaps and
bounds but the competitors to SMS are still reliant on the E.164 naming
system. Ubiquity works. SIP URI's have not. 

- would this apply to interconnects between private infrastructures?
   (E.g. ViPR)
[RS> ] Which private infrastructures ..between licensed carriers possibly
but non modification of signaling would probably be standard clause in any
IP to IP SIP Interconnection agreement. 

Enterprises? Highly dboutful. There is nothing even now that would prevent
private peering among SIP domains. In PSTN terms it's called Least Cost
Routing.  You just need a database of the mapped identifiers.  

	Thanks,
	Paul