IP lessons learned down under

The Australian rock band “Men At Work” burst on the scene in 1982 with a #1 hit, Down Under.  I recently visited Australia for the first time.  I was the keynote speaker at IP Communications 2003, a Terrapinn Pty Ltd. event held in October in Sydney.  I have good news to report—and a couple of food for thought items. 

First, Australia is amazing. Go! Second, at least on the IP Communications front, the men (and women) “down under” are hard at work. Third, having just returned from the  anorexic Comdex show in Las Vegas, where the assault on the senses has turned toward more adult-oriented entertainment than ever, “The Thunder Down Under” is the Aussies’ booming economy and not the seemingly omni-present poster of “boy-toy” twentysomethings clad only in white briefs who compete against the equally incredibly posed (IP) poster boys of Chippendales. Fourth, after scientific testing, my hosts convinced me that Foster’s Lager is the (expletive deleted) shipped to gullible Yanks because they refuse to drink it even at gun point. 
 

...as anyone who deals with IP telephony knows, if voice over IP (VoIP) sessions are not encrypted inside of an organization, anyone with a laptop and some standard software can listen in on any conversation.

Trust me on this one.  And, while good news to the readers of this space, as the result of hosting a raucous interactive panel session, I now must live down the title, “The Jerry Springer of Australian Telecom.”  I am obviously not proud of that moniker, but the session was one for the time capsule.

Indeed, it is this session—which involved me and an impressive audience of Australia’s top end users and vendors interrogating an academic, the IT manager of a major university, one of the country’s leading privacy expert, the CIO of largest IP end user deployment in the country to date, one of the leading wireless consultants in the world and high level executives from Avaya and Nortel. It was group that generated some interesting questions about IP telephony deployment.  In fact, I am interested in your feedback since the issues involved two matters on most IT manager’s front burners: privacy and security.

Here they are in a nutshell:

• Since 1997, it has been the law in Australia that all manner of interactive communications be capable of lawful interception. If you can interact with somebody remotely over electronic means, in Australia the government has mandated that they be able to listen in when they believe it is necessary.  It is unlawful to stop them from doing so.

• E-911 is an issue that in a corporate context has yet to be effectively dealt with down under. Here is an example. I am in Melbourne in a hotel on a broadband connection using my IP softphone to interact with my corporate resources in Sydney over an IP VPN.  I look like a mere extension phone on my company’s Sydney PBX (aka, voice server). I start having chest pains. I dial E-911. They send an ambulance to headquarters in Sydney.  As the song says, “bye-bye love, bye-bye happiness….”  And, that is not an Australian only song. It is universal.

The reason the first issue is so vexing, as anyone who deals with IP telephony knows, if voice over IP (VoIP) sessions are not encrypted inside of an organization, anyone with a laptop and some standard software can listen in on any conversation. This is not to mention other kinds of mischief that can be performed.  Encrypt the voice, and what happens when the authorities in this country wish to do legal intercept?  Here's the response I got to that query: “Good question! The obvious answer is to demand the keys…Fortunately, the FBI and others have left enterprise communications alone for the moment.” 

Now there is a comforting thought. 

Dear terrorists, please use pre-paid calling cards for communicating with each other. However, if you are in a jam, just duck into any office and pick up an IP phone. Or, get a softphone for your laptop.  After all Starbucks has great coffee as well as great WiFi.

This is an action item for enterprises, carriers and the public safety community, that needs to rise above more than the myriad of conferences that have taken place pointing out that a problem exists. The challenge on E-911 is equally as serious. The old Beatle’s movie, Help! racks up the issues.  Hide me when I need to be hidden. Find me and protect me when I need that as well.

The three most valuable things in the information age are going to be the mediation (protection and parsing) of my: identity, location and time. In an IP world, the first two items for the moment are not secured in a trustworthy “E”vironment. Matching my identity with my physical location in real-time so I can be found and communicated with is a priority. 

If 9/11 proved nothing else, it proved this point. IP as backup to failed TDM voice systems was great, proving, some say, the real power of convergence. This looks instead like a case of being careful of what one wishes for. Ubiquitous access without authentication and location has very powerful, unintended consequences—and now is the time to deal with them.

Finally, I’d like to thank all of you who wrote me last month about my remark that the E-911 issues were under control. They are understood, but my further research into the areas seems to shot that are not yet under control. I would recommend to everyone a careful search of the Lucent, Nortel and Cisco sites for information on this manner.

Privacy and security. Security and privacy. IP actually still does have some challenges. The catchy music during the fairy godmother’s transformation of the pumpkin into a wonderful horse-drawn coach in Walt Disney’s Cinderella says it all: “Put 'em together and what have you got, bibbidi-bobbidi bibbidi-bobbidi bibbidi-bobbidi-boo.” 

Something to think and to talk about. They certainly are in the land down under. 

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Peter Bernstein is President of Infonautics Consulting Inc. He can be reached at pb111451@optonline.net.