[AusNOG] the legal consequences of ignoring compliance

Paul Wallace paul.wallace at mtgi.com.au
Thu May 16 20:39:19 EST 2013


Bevan is right where he says “companies of scale and their in house Counsel would not like network engineers calling law enforcement agencies playing Matlock, particularly when said notices are generally not even addressed to said engineer.” The ‘operative being SCALE (double entendre if you think about it! :;-)) (and Matlock was a cop not a lawyer wasn’t he?)

however …

Many members here work for, or own businesses that simply cannot afford, or don’t believe they should need to retain ‘In-House Counsel’, yet still need comply with a whole range of compliance which ALWAYS retains the possibilities of legal consequences should things go wrong.

Sadly, there are very few places for Australian businessmen to turn to get free legal advice.

Worse is the fact where I sometimes ponder whether or not Telecoms is possibly the most compliance heavy industry in this nation.

I’m sure Bevan is not suggesting that you either retain fulltime In House General Counsel or, alternatively, surrender your business.











From: ausnog-bounces at lists.ausnog.net [mailto:ausnog-bounces at lists.ausnog.net] On Behalf Of Bevan Slattery
Sent: Thursday, May 16, 2013 7:04 PM
To: Sam Silvester
Cc: ausnog at lists.ausnog.net
Subject: Re: [AusNOG] Confirmation of govt blackholing. Was: Re: Understanding lack of Aus connectivity to melbournefreeuniversity.org.

Sure and I would have hoped the engineers were consulted here.

But some companies of scale and their in house Counsel would not like network engineers calling law enforcement agencies playing Matlock, particularly when said notices are generally not even addressed to said engineer.

Of course I would believe they would consult the engineers, but I could see how the investigation and decision in larger companies doesn't sit with the engineer but those that have the ultimate legal training (lawyers) and ultimate legal responsibility (CEO and Board).

This is front if mind for me at the moment as I'm off to Washington DC in a few hours to front "Team Telecom".  I'd be mortified if my network engineers took it upon themselves and rang some three letter acronym agency to dispute or discuss a notice without my (or lawyers) knowledge.

Anyway, I think we agree on the principles here and understand what should happen.  But it's easy to sit on the outside and judge without all the information (which I'm doing too).  Just trying to show sometimes its not that simple and that this isn't always the engineers call.

Probably time to move on.

B

Cheers

B



On 16/05/2013, at 3:28 AM, Sam Silvester <sam.silvester at gmail.com<mailto:sam.silvester at gmail.com>> wrote:
On Thursday, May 16, 2013, Bevan Slattery wrote:
In some companies of scale network engineers focus on network engineering, rather than the work of management or legal teams.

Not saying its right, just saying...

B

Equally, I'd suggest it's good practice for  management and legal decisions to have input or advice from technical teams.

Sam
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