[Infowarrior] - Comcast's law enforcement handbook leaked

[Richard Forno]

Comcast's law enforcement handbook leaked, could teach telecoms a thing or
two

By Nate Anderson | Published: October 15, 2007 - 11:29PM CT

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071015-comcasts-law-enforcement-handb
ook-leaked-could-teach-telecoms-a-thing-or-two.html

Imagine for a moment that you are a cop. The fuzz. After a busy day spent
forcing punk libertarians to bow before the awesome power of the state (as
represented by your taser), you stumble onto a dastardly computer crime, the
sort of crime that one can solve only with the help of the perp's ISP, which
in this case happens to be Comcast. Will Comcast give you the information
you need? And what will it cost your department, which was hoping to save
enough cash to have that outdoor barbecue next week?

Thanks to the leak of a recent version of Comcast's Handbook for Law
Enforcement (PDF), quickly spotted by readers of Broadband Reports, the
Federation of American Scientists has made it simple to find out. The group
is hosting the handbook for one and all to peruse. It's not quite the
bastion of secrets one might expect; though marked "Confidential," the
document appears to be something intended for external use by law
enforcement offices across the country, not for internal Comcast usage.

Still, it lets us learn interesting factoids, such as the fact that Comcast
charges a thousand bucks to set up a court-ordered intercept device (thrifty
departments, take note: the bill includes a free month of surveillance!).
Future months are $750 apiece. If the case involves child exploitation,
Comcast waives all fees.

As for retention periods, Comcast says that it can access call detail
records for two years. IP log files for DHCP leases are kept for 180 days.
Should requests come in for information that exceeds those limits, the
company makes clear that it has nothing to provide.

Those looking for shocking revelations won't find them here; as FAS notes in
its own coverage of the material, "With respect to surveillance policy, the
Comcast manual hews closely to the letter of the law, as one would hope and
expect."

Indeed, reading through it, one is struck by the many references to statues
that need to be followed or court orders that need to be obtained. National
Security Letters must be hand-delivered, and the company notes that
"attention must be paid to the various court proceedings in which the legal
status of the requests is at issue."

Assuming that these actually represent the limits of Comcast policy, there's
little or nothing to object to here, especially when compared with AT&T,
BellSouth, and Verizon‹all rumored to have aided the NSA by turning over
customer records without legal authority or providing full access to
incoming optical connections in secret rooms.