The provider of e-mail infrastructure has responded to a request from a German client to help the ISP comply with a new law requiring ISPs to be able to monitor the activity of one subscriber without compromising the privacy of others.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Managing Editor [June 11, 2004]

Mill Valley, Calif.-based integrated e-mail software provider Stalker Software is helping ISPs comply with new laws inspired by the war on terror.

"New government regulations require that we are able to effectively monitor and report account information as requested by law enforcement agencies. Failure to comply could result in a range of penalties, from fines to the revoking of our ISP operations license," notes a spokesperson from Köln, Germany-based cable company ish in a press release. "Because it is incorporated into our existing IT infrastructure, the lawful intercept features of CommuniGate Pro allow our organization to achieve compliance with these requirements and to efficiently compile and report requested information without costly technology investments or the need for additional human resources."

It remains to be seen whether demand for the feature will grow among ISPs, and demand, in this case, depends mostly on the laws. "We're not 100 percent sure which nations require this," explains Ali Liptrot, director of sales and marketing for Stalker. "Other European nations are looking at passing a law like this. It's about governments being able to monitor terrorist activity."

It's vital to monitor the suspect's account and only that account, and to monitor all activity on the account.

Explains Philip Slater, sales engineer for Stalker Software, "we're not keeping a transaction record of messages sent and received. It's all activity in the account. It's what protocol, IP address, and time, and it's real time. It's like a wiretap."

Liptrot says that while the concept is simple, implementation is no piece of cake. "While other e-mail servers are capable of doing this, it's not easy."

Explains Slater, "intercept is part of the e-mail app. Whether it's local delivery or a message being read, an e-mail message is generated on the fly. For every app, we have to have a monitor process. Because we're a consolidated e-mail system, we're able to be aware of any account transaction immediately without having to get different logs together or sniff packets."

Monitoring must be fast and invisible. "It happens on the server side," notes Slater. "It's completely transparent to the user."

He expects to see some demand for this in the workplace, in part because it's simply a more sophisticated version of the type of monitoring that is already commonplace. "We simply take the reporting facilities of a standard e-mail system and turn the report into an e-mail message instead of forcing people to go through server logs, etc."

Certain industries will probably be more interested in adopting it. "Some locations already have a monitoring policy for all transactions, such as healthcare, real estate and finance."

There is no additional charge for the feature. It will be included in all future releases of CommuniGate Pro.

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