Maybe we need to raise the level of this conversation. We seem to be
focused pretty heavily on specifying a question for the RP draft to be
an answer to (which ignores H.323 and so on). May I attempt to rephrase
the question without presuming the answer?

It seems that the fundamental issue is that during certain circumstances
there is a need to ensure that individuals that have been given specific
responsibility and authority to act for the good of the community can
communicate. These include certain government officials, folks
responsible for critical communication infrastructure, those who would
organize appropriate responses to mass injury or destruction, etc. In
order to accomplish that, policies must be put in place to identify such
individuals, verify that communications which claim that privilege are
in fact authentically authorized to use it, and ensure that the speed
and accuracy of those communications is not unnecessarily impeded. That
fact is fundamental to the charter of this working group.

In order to accomplish that, there must be mechanisms in the signaling
protocols that apply to communications that allow for this type of
policy to be identified, claimed, and acted out. These include at
minimum SIP, H.323, and H.248; it may well also apply to other signaling
protocols, and may apply at other communication layers to non-signalled
traffic.

The specifics of such a policy are not the province of this working
group, or of the IETF in general. However, any such policy which is in
active use and which is agreed to by appropriate policy bodies should be
representable in the mechanism we define. If this is not so, the failure
is not on the part of the policy, it is on the part of the mechanism.

From my perspective, the policy belongs to the policy-maker; the
language that defines it is non-technical, and should neither attempt
nor be construed to color the technical implementation of it. If we can
come up with one set of labels that adequately describes all potential
policies, this is good. If we cannot (and it seems to me to be a
difficult thing, given the possible range of "all potential policies"),
then we need to be able to identify both the policy and the claims being
made under it.

The authentication and authorization mechanisms appropriate are often
set by the policy itself; the relevant technical issues in that area
include ensuring that mechanisms exist to authenticate and authorize the
claims under the policy, giving guidance as to what technical mechanisms
may be appropriate or inappropriate, and ensuring that any appropriate
mechanism can be encoded in the mechanism provided.

The specific set of policies in view here are those used by the US and
UK, and which have made their way into existing telephony standards.
Other policies are also possible.

Once such a mechanism exists, it is also usable by non-emergency-related
policies as well, such as the one used by the US military and NATO
countries.



\item[EPCC:] Enhanced probability of call completion; indicates a
mechanism that improves the probability that certain calls reach their
intended destination.  Call completion encompasses successful
application-layer (SIP) signaling as well as successful acquisition of
bandwidth and other necessary network resources.