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