From: Dan Clemmensen (dgc@cox.rr.com)
Date: Mon Apr 29 2002 - 17:07:35 MDT
Mike Lorrey wrote:
> anschau.ez@terra.com.br wrote:
>
>>Is it legal to eaves drop data in America/UK ?
>>
>
> The law is pretty clear that you can listen in to any conversation that
> comes to your phone. A TCP/IP network is really just a modern version of
> the old 'Party Line' phone system, where several residences were on the
> same phone line, calls for each being distinguished by the pattern of
> rings. Today, the 'pattern of rings' is distinguished by your IP
> address, but packets addressed to other IP addresses assigned by your
> local ISP can be sniffed right off of your dial-up phone line or full
> time broadband connection.
This is incorrect. Only your own packets are delivered to you on your
dial-up or DSL connection, and all modern Cable systems only your modem
can decrypt your packets on the RF side, and only you packets are
delivered by the modem to your LAN.
> ... If you are attached directly to the backbone,
> you can sniff any and all packets that pass along that backbone.
This is true, sort of. But essentially all modern backbone connections
are point-to-point between routers belonging to major ISPs or carriers,
who can tap the traffic in the router.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 09:13:42 MST