[AusNOG] Telstra agreed to retain [Australian] data for US authorities

[Mark Newton]

On 14/07/2013, at 2:15 PM, Tony <td_miles at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Two guys in black suits walk in, look all around the room, then a third suit walks in. He puts it to you that you will do what is outlined in the document being given to you. You essentially have two choices:
> 
> 1. Comply.
> 2. Politely deline and effectively disconnect Australian Internet from the rest of the world.

I put it to you that a choice like that would never be presented, because the fallout
arising from (2) would be (to coin a phrase) "diplomatically apeshit."

What's more likely is that (2) would be, "Find another landing station operated by someone
who has already complied."

That'd delay the project, place the installer in a position where they'd know that landing
parties would have them by the short and curlies on price and access to cross connects,
and also ensure that the cable would be in a place where the landing party who had
already complied would be able to intercept the cable in any case.

Sometimes small threats are more effective.

The FCC license grant documents for foreign cables are reasonably open documents, and
lay out the terms and conditions of the license (including interceptability) and usually
include the Lat/Long of the cable stations at each end (although sometimes they
"accidentally" transpose digits, those darn typos!).  Pretty sure that a little bit of googling
will reveal that REACH wasn't being treated at all uniquely here, and nor was Australia.


  - mark


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