Hello all,

The revised swiss telecommunications law (SR 784.10) that came into
effect today contains a provision that directly affects swiss providers,
namely article 45 paragraph 2, which reads [1, 2, 3]:

> Art. 45 Abs. 2
> 2 Wer diese Daten zur Ermittlung missbräuchlich hergestellter Verbindungen 
> oder
> unlauterer Massenwerbung benötigt, kann von der Anbieterin von 
> Fernmeldediensten
> Auskunft über Namen und Adressen der anrufenden Anschlüsse verlangen.

I see two potential things happening:

1) Customers ask their *own* provider about the name of the responsible
spammer for the usual drivel of spam sent through open proxies, abused
feedback forms and the like -- which is clearly not what is intended by
this article, and something which is clearly not possible in most cases.

2) Some spam recipients may be clueful enough to find out the
responsible provider, and if this provider happens to be under swiss
jurisdiction, the provider must reveal the identity of the spammer to
the complainer.

I do not care too much about the first case (although it may bring quite
some additional work on the help desks), but I was wondering how you
plan to handle the second case.

In order to satisfy both this clause and the general privacy protection
law (SR 235), a provider would need to:

* Verify the complaint (ie, was it really spam according to the
definition in the law).

* Verify that he indeed can identify the responsible individual customer.

Both of these preconditions have their own difficulties.

* How should a provider determine whether what the recipient got was
actually spam, especially if it is not a clear-cut case?

* How does the provider make sure it's actually a spamming case and not
eg a fishing expedition by a stalker or the copyright mafia?

* How is the actual responsible customer securely identified, eg if it
is an abused web form? What should be done in the case of the "hacked
wireless" defense?

In short, I see a considerable amount of work and uncertainty for
Internet providers in Switzerland (both residential/broadband _and_
hosting providers), both from their own customers and external complaints.

What's your take on it?

-- Matthias

[1] German text: http://www.admin.ch/ch/d/ff/2006/3565.pdf
[2] French text: http://www.admin.ch/ch/f/ff/2006/3439.pdf
[3] Italian text: http://www.admin.ch/ch/i/ff/2006/3309.pdf
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