--- Begin Message ---
>>>>>>>>>> WARNING <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
The USPS is a not-for-profit corporate agency of the US government that
Congress has oversight with. Both the FBI and NSA have direct working
relationships with this agency. In other countries, such as Britain and
Germany, the Government Post Office also runs the Telecommunications within
that country. Within those countries, their intelligence agencies monitor
and target specific users "at will." This means that if just one individual
at the intelligence agency wants to 'listen in' on your e-traffic
(legitimately or illegitimately), they can and do. The Intelligence
Oversight Program prevents the storage of communications between US persons
only within the United States or where both parties are KNOWN US citizens,
where one is within the US and the other is outside. It does NOT prevent
(and I speak from experience) the 'casual monitoring' of US citizens.
With the USPS involved and all the implications on "private communications'
this will have a chilling affect on the individual users = and hence the
customer-base for business and e-commerce.
Can you imagine the NSA & CIA monitoring your stuff and passing it on to the
IRS, INS, FBI, and others? Though I am not personally concerned, it is the
Principle of Freedom that truly concerns me. I didn't spend 20 years in the
military in defending the Constitution, to have it trampled by bureaucrats
doing what, in any other scenario, would make perfect sense. This can and
WILL lead to a direct invasion of privacy. This MUST be stopped!
Bruce Koehler, Owner
The Koehl=Mine Computer Consulting
winnt at flash dot net
http://www.flash.net/~winnt/TKM/index.html
-----Original Message-----
From: Aaron Sawchuk <asawchuk at dreamcom dot net>
To: ispc-list at ispc dot org <ispc-list at ispc dot org>
Date: Friday, June 19, 1998 11:03 PM
Subject: [ispc-list] US Domain Future Developments (fwd)
>This is interesting...
>
>---------- Forwarded message ----------
>Date: Fri, 19 Jun 1998 14:42:31 -0700 (PDT)
>From: Jon Postel <postel@ISI.EDU>
>To: us-dom-adm@ISI.EDU
>Subject: US Domain Future Developments
>
>
>
>Hello:
>
>About a year ago we sent a memo about the possibility that it might be
>necessary to begin charging for delegations of locality names in the US
>domain.
>
>It turns out that we have avoided that by obtaining further funding
>through 30-Sep-98.
>
>And we have had discussions that will most likely lead to funding for
>the next year (Oct98-Sep99) or more from the United States Postal
>Service (USPS).
>
>Since there has been some news about the USPS becoming involved in the
>US domain today we want to clarify the situation.
>
>ISI will need some funds from a new source to continue management of
>the US domain after 30-Sep-98.
>
>Brian Kahin (of the US Government, OSTP) did introduce management
>people in the USPS to me, and we have had some positive meetings, and
>now have a general understanding that the USPS is interested in
>supporting our work on managing the US domain at ISI for the year
>Oct98-Sep99 (and possibly additional years). No contract as yet,
>though pre-contract paper work has been exchanged.
>
>I believe that in the long run nearly all the country codes will have
>some government influence acting on their management. Within the US,
>the USPS is a very unusualy thing in that it is not officially part of
>the government but an independent non-for-profit corporation, yet
>closely supervised by the government. If the US Government told the
>IANA to allocate the US domain to some agency or another there could be
>a lot of worse choices.
>
>The USPS is trying to think of ways to provide additional services
>through the the US domain. They've asked me to review some of these
>and there may be some ideas they haven't told me about yet.
>
>One of the discussions is about ways to add branches to the US domain
>to make more desirable to businesses to use names in the US domain.
>
>Another idea is that everyone with an address that the USPS can deliver
>physical mail to could automatically have an email address in the US
>domain. I think this idea still needs a lot of work to understand all
>the implications both technically and socially.
>
>No one expresed any desire to keep any of this secret, on the other
>hand no one felt things had progressed to the point that a public
>announcement or press release was warranted.
>
>There may be internal confidential memos about proposed ideas that are
>still being debated within the USPS, and i wouldn't know about that.
>
>In managing the postal system the USPS is a very significant user of
>Internet technology. The following is a brief description of some of
>their Internet capability.
>
> The Postal Service currently manages a large information
> systems network. he USPS manages a class A license for IP
> addresses (56.X.X.X). Within the internal USPS network are 15
> autonomous systems, with 16 areas each, which provide service
> to up to 34,000 local area networks. When fully deployed, the
> USPS internal network will provide TCP/IP connectivity to over
> 150,000 individual networked devices. Within the usps.gov
> second level domain, the SPS has one primary and sixteen
> secondary domain name servers which currently handle over
> 125,000 individual host names. Because of the high bandwidth
> demands of the digital image traffic used in mail sorting, USPS
> networks have a total capacity equivalent to over 700 T1 lines.
> Firewalls between the USPS intranet and the public Internet
> handle 1.5 million transactions per day at a peak rate of
> 140,000 transactions per hour, exchanging 14 GB of data in the
> form of web pages and files. In addition, the USPS, as a
> non-profit government enterprise, is able to obtain the best
> technical expertise available from private industry through
> consulting and contracting arrangements. The USPS
> organizational structure and supplier ourcing agreements
> currently in place can provide services within the existing .us
> TLD, and will scale readily to handle any growth in future
> demands.
>
>--jon.
>
>
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