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FBI's Wiretapping Demands May Nix Verio Deal
An Anonymous Coward pointed to a story on the AP wire, writing: "Why does the FBI and US government have problems with this merger? Is there some sinister wiretap access deal between the current US ISPs ? [From the article:] 'An NTT spokesman told the Journal a pending U.S. government review of the deal is a response to FBI and Justice Department concerns that law-enforcement agencies maintain access to Verio's Internet structure to obtain wiretaps and serve subpoenas for information. ... In telecommunications deals, the FBI has asked for assurances that only U.S. facilities be used to handle U.S. traffic. The FBI has insisted the companies employ U.S. citizens to handle wiretapping activities.'" A fellow-traveling A.C. points to coverage on CNNfn. Does this bother anyone?
So when the CIA and NSA merge with foreign intelligence agencies to create Echelon and surveil US corporations and citizens, it's ok, but prevent the FBI from doing the same, and it's no-go.
It's all so much clearer to me now, this is all just a turf battle.
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The real Webmaven is user ID 27463. I don't rate an imposter, because my ID is such a lame-ass high number.
I think this is more about the right to tap and not an acusation that Verio is tapping anyone. By law, the FBI does have the right to tap lines (following the correct proceedure, of course) and they wantt to make sure that they maintain that right.
kwsNI
The Judi Bari case occurred in the 1990. I would also be surprised to find that the FBI didn't try and tap some phone lines of anti-WTO organizers (especially after the reasonably successfull work in Seattle. I know of one person, here in Canada, who had her phone tapped for political activity in 1995. As she put it, "About the only interesting thing they got out of it was some really nice recipes". Other people can probably point to other recent examples.
Taking civil and political rights for granted is probably our greatest risk in losing them. Fighting to maintain such rights is far easier than a fight to get them back. Unfortunately it's not easy to see the value of the fight until we're obviously in the latter situation.
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Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
He was a blond-haired (blue-eyed?) conservative who "served his country" in the military and probably voted Republican before he was arrested for the deadliest terrorist attack on US soil in recent history. I know of no evidence that he announced his plans to blow up Oklahoma over any phone line that the FBI bothered to tap.
I could further point out that, although Martin Luther King is now considered a Civil Rights hero, the FBI didn't just wire tap him, they tried to discredit him with their wiretap info. As for the people who shot MLK, the FBI probably considered them good, upstanding members of the KKK.
NOW you can try and justify violations of, and limits on, our civil rights "so the government can protect us".
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Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
I'm certainly not saying that it never happens, by any agency, at any classification level (no matter how deep you make it into the TS-SCI world, there's always weird stuff going on somewhere above), but it never happened in my department, and never to my knowledge anywhere else.
Chris
We all know that the U.S. government wiretaps. This article isn't about whether or not that is right. Wiretapping is normal, and there are, on occassion, real reasons why wiretapping is the best way to go about solving a problem or answering a question. I know-- as part of my job I analyze FBI data. It would be foolish to assume that ALL governments don't have some form of surveilance in place to check up on those aspects of their citizens' lives that warrent it. The Japanese constitution, however, prohibits the Japanese government from any form of wiretapping. (Not to say that all governments always stick to their constitutions -or equivalents-, but...) That the FBI feels compelled to say, "we don't believe you, we don't trust you!" to the Japanese government is perhaps excessive, but well within the realm of normal FBI activity.
In the Techserver article it is stated that the FBI is asking for assurances (asking for assurances -- they're not allowed to actually interfere with international issues.) that U.S. facilities handle U.S. telcom traffic. Here's the real issue: if this starts becoming a standard, it has cascading implications for the involvement of the U.S. in the global telcom industry. How can we participate in what is by nature a global entity when we're supposed to draw firm and distinct lines between "us" and "them?"
Do something about world hunger. Click here
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Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
It's a lot easier for a police service to get this kind of 'favour' done if they don't have to do all of this politics bulshit with civilians who might just ask questions.
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Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
they can't catch the evil pron runners that would take recources away from figuring out who is really under 13 on ICQ.
Devil Ducky
Devil Ducky
MY peers would get out of jury duty.
How would they (the Feds) lose that access due to the NTT purchase? Don't foreign corporations doing business in the US have to abide by US laws?
I think there is something else going on here that has not come out yet. Why is NTT interested in a small-time Colorado ISP, that's operating at a loss? Follow the money.
This is the beginning of the M$ counter-strike against the US govt...
"The Internet is made of cats."
Now, this is just my gut feeling, but I think the FBI's concerns over access are just a ruse. The real concern (from a national security standpoint) is more likely that NTT (the buyer, Japan's national telephone monopoly) will use the tapping capabilities built into Verio's networks for gathering of intelligence (economic or otherwise) as an agent of the Japanese gov't or corporations.
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
Personally, i don't care for wiretap protections. I think they are outdated, and i think that the idea of government regulation in the information industry is a stupid idea.
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Play Six Pack Man. I
Which is worse....the FBI wiretapping the american
public, or the american public being deluded into
believing that its ok?
-"You'll have plenty of time to sleep when you're dead."
No, the reason they can't catch the evil pr0n-runners is because all their agents are too busy pretending to be under 13 while on ICQ! :) :) :)
Well, seeing as the telephone companies have been known to tap for years, why is this such a huge surprise. Not saying that Verio is doing such a thing, but you can even find packet sniffers on the machines they control in their own network. There could be all kinds of stuff someone could run even from a leased box. I'm the government has to take some measures to catch the evil pr0n runners!
Cyber-Newscaster Ana Nova Sold for $144 million
This is the best argument I can think of for NOT availing yourself of the VPN services offered by many ISP's.
Much better to roll your own with one of the many hardware or software products that will easilly allow you to create your own encrypted VPN's
Then, provided the encryption is strong enough, let them tap away.
Question Reality
And, actually, the FBI doesn't have to sift through all that data. It's up to the ISP to log everything that a LEA monitored customer of the ISP does.
Echelon has the data stored already. It could pay for itself by selling info to the FBI and others.
134340: I am not a number. I am a free planet!
"Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent." from Foundation and Empire by Isaac Asimov
And what would Mr. Asimov have it be, the first refuge? Violence should always be the last refuge.
On the other hand, seeing as most of the time the WTO behaves like the US' jailyard bitch I doubt it...
Nick
-- "It's a sad day for American capitalism when a man can't fly a midget on a kite over Central Park" - Jim Moran
Nick
-- "It's a sad day for American capitalism when a man can't fly a midget on a kite over Central Park" - Jim Moran
Perhaps, but if you look at the U.S. Code, Title 47, Chapter 1, Section 12, it reads: "it is made the duty of the Attorney General of the United States, by proper proceedings, to prevent any unlawful interference with the rights and equities of the United States under all acts of Congress relating to such." Title 47 serves as a vital part of the legislation passed regarding interstate communication.
Furthermore, take a look at Section 13:
equal advantages and facilities in the interchange of business, as herein provided for, without any discrimination whatever for or adverse to the telegraph line of any or either of said connecting companies, or shall refuse to abide by or perform and carry out within a reasonable time the order or orders of the Federal Communications Commission, shall in every such case of refusal or failure be guilty of a misdemeanor, and, on conviction thereof, shall in every such case be fined in a sum of not exceeding $1,000, and may be imprisoned not less than six months; and in every such case of refusal or failure the party aggrieved may not only cause the officer or agent guilty thereof to be prosecuted under the provisions of this section, but may also bring an action for the damages sustained thereby against the company whose officer or agent may be guilty thereof, in the district court of the United States
Maybe the FBI will think twice before proceeding with their actions.
Are you suggesting that we should stop allowing
"lawfully-authorized" searches as well?
Oh, no, I like how the FBI has the resources to investigate wrong doings. The only problem I have is that not only can they investigate with great ability, they can also enforce with almost no limits. Me thinks the enforcement should be delegated off to local police. Balance of power and all that.
Otherwise, someone influencial can really get the good 'ol boys in this tight organization on a campaign to really fix a person up good in the criminal justice system over even a simple mistake of associating with the wrong group. "Have you any affiliation with communists or used drugs in the past?"
I realized about 3 seconds after posting. I was thinking of Sprint and DTT merger talks. My bad.
Not when the state executes the wrong guy, who was convicted on fabricated evidence, and who petitioned the state to allow him to prove hids innocence by DNA testing, which the state refused to allow in the name of so-called "closure". That's an incentive for the real killer to commit more murders.
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
As shown here, one of the tools that the NSA uses is the Paracel Textfinder .
From the webpage for the textfinder: A single TextFinder application may involve trillions of bytes of textual archive and thousands of online users, or gigabytes of live data stream per day that are filtered against tens of thousands of complex interest profiles.
If challenged in the supreme court this would easily be deemd unlawful. This is a clear violation of an individuals right to privacy. Which the supreme court has set a precedence to uphold. The FBI could request information from the isp. But thats as far as their jurisdiction should go.
Do you really think the supreme court rule in favor of privacy? After all, this is the same supreme court that has already restricted our 1st admentment rights. In this goverment, the only way to have any sort of privacy is to use heavy encryption.
The problem isn't so much that it's an EU company. Hell, there are US defense contractors owned by EU companies. The problem is that it is a German company. There are laws that arouse from the holocaust and the disclosure of how much spying the DDR (East Germany) did on the public that make it difficult to share information with the gov't.
You have laws against sharing all sorts of information, creating central databases, harvesting infromation. Hell, I'm suprised double click isn't going to sue.
The problem is there could be a time where the Feds requests will put them at odds with German law, and when the cards fall, Germany has greater pull than the US.
Contrary to some of the other posts, I don't think this has anything to do with regulating the internet (other than on the face of the argument). It is arising from the FBI, et al.'s concern about being able to do their jobs the way they have in the past. They want to be able to have access to what person X said/wrote to anyone else at anytime the FBI/et al. believe they need to. That said, I think they need get over it. They cannot continue to monitor all aspects of communication the way they have up to the 80s. They will have to start using their brains and good old fashioned leg work to get the info they want. In some cases, that may mean that they do get everything they want for a case, but that is part of the price of the USA being in (or towards) the front of the technological boom that the world is in the midst of. The FBI/et al. can't expect to limit competition and the "free"-market just because they might loose access to some of their current monitoring mechanisms.
The FBI has insisted the companies employ U.S. citizens to handle wiretapping activities
Whew! I'm sure glad they don't want any foreign nationals spying on me.
Now, go ahead with your flaming responses pooh-poohing the very thought that the federal government should be treated as a dangerous (if useful) animal, instead of as a perfectly trustworthy and benevolent shepherd for our flock of citizens.
If I'm not doing anything illegal, they have no business monitoring me. It's that simple.
Please read my page Why You Should Use Encryption.
If you get your mail from and put web pages on a hosting service, then at a minimum you should use one that provides secure shell (ssh) and secure copy (scp) access. One such hosting service that does is Seagull Networks. Does anyone know any others?
When you retrieve your email via POP or load a web page via FTP your password is being transmitted in the clear. You have no control over which routers and cables it passes through in the process, so you have no way of knowing if someone's running a sniffer on a compromised host. Usually you have no knowledge even of the route, unless you go to the trouble to run traceroute regularly.
You can download your email via an encrypted channel with ssh port forwarding if your mail host provides ssh. The instructions given are oriented to the BeOS but apply in general to any OS for which an SSH client exists.
If you run a website that uses passwords please consider allowing the users to enter their passwords via SSL (https).
If you use websites that require passwords, please use a different password for each site. At the very least, use a unique password for your important sites, like your email, web pages and financial sites. If you keep the passwords in a file (which you may have to do because there are so many sites that take passwords), encrypt the file.
Be aware that most sites that have passwords do not encrypt them, otherwise they wouldn't be able to send you your password reminder in clear text. I've even used sites that mailed out password reminders in the clear every couple months just to prompt me to use the service. Note that anyone at the site who has root access, anyone who compromises the site or anyone running a sniffer on or near the site will be able to catch your passwords.
Also I think it is very likely that many websites are provided for no other purpose than to collect passwords for later use by crackers - beware of that free trial and use a unique password if you must accept the offer!
Use the anonymizer or, if you have Windows 95 or 98, Freedom to protect your privacy while you web surf.
Finally, do you use a laptop computer? Do you have files on it that you don't wish to share with the random stranger who might steal it someday? How about your competitors? A thief won't likely be in the direct employ of your competitors but they may recognize the value of the information and sell it to them, or even post it on the net for fun.
And remember in this information age the information on our computers is more valuable than the hardware itself, and unlike car stereos can continue providing value to a thief because, once it is fenced, it is still available to be fenced again.
Depending on your OS, you should use PGPDisk or the Linux encrypting kernel on your laptop.
Consider encrypting important information on your desktop too. A friend of mine who is a software developer lost every machine in his company in a robbery - source code, strategic plans, and the customer database.
I know of two cases where laptops were stolen from intelligence agents, once during the Gulf war, and once from an MI5 agent while he'd set it between his legs at a train station. Good thing they used encryption!
Finally, read the Forum on Risks to the Public in Computers and Related Systems available on the Usenet News as comp.risks and on the web at http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks
-- Could you use my software consulting serv
Given the choice of:
- Keeping your business open to FBI wiretapping, and
- Not having your business open to FBI wiretapping,
what would people rather have?If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
Don't think that the US could do the same ?
Then consider that certain URI linking is on its way to becoming illegal in the US; enforcing this is a good reason for the FBI to tap ISP lines, no? (see http://www.eff.org/br/br1.html#1 )
Slashdotters need to remember, U.S. subsidiaries of foreign companies are basically subject to all the same commerce laws that American companies are. This is why the floating of the Microsoft goes to Canada rumour was rather obnoxiously stupid. It could have shielded them a bit, but we still could have thrown a lot of huge fines and restrictions on what they could sell down here.
Not a single terrorist has been caught by the FBI due to traditional wiretaps. According to the 1999 Wiretap Report from the Adminstrative office of the US Courts, availabe at http://http://www.epic.org/privacy/wiretap/stats/1 999-report/default.html , in 1999 the feds were granted a total of 601 wiretaps. A whopping 504 (83%) of those were for Narcotics, 61 (10%)were for racketeering, 1 was for bribery, 4 were for homicide and assault, 3 for kidnapping, 2 for theft, 2 for exortion, and 24 for other crimes. Geez, terrorism isn't on that list at all!
I see why the FBI would want Only US companies dealing with US traffic. If you had a ligitmate reason to wire-tap say, a kiddie porn dealer, would you as an FBI agent want to have to deal with international law in a matter that would normally be covered under simple interstate issues?
.02 of devils advocating.
but at the same time, the FBI should make some attempt at modernizing the current wiretapping laws to allow for the "Globalization of the communications industry" (look mommy, a herd of coroprate buzzwords) Working under laws that are as old as the telephone is an absolute joke. But this is all under the impression that they have a ligitmate reason to be wiretapping in the first place
just
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
So Virio handles 20% of the online traffic for S&P 500 report requests. I wonder if the FBI wants wire taps to prevent insider trading of some sort. I have a feeling that if a foreign company tried to buy any US company who's business was to display or allow trading of stock the FBI would be rather upset because it would interfere with their ability to prevent things like insider trading. My guess is this isn't just a, they are an internet company and if a foreign company buys them we can't snoop, but it is due to the fact that it deals with stock and therefore could possible be used for illegal stock trading which could damage the economy.
OTOH we could listen to all of the paranoid around here and believe that there is a government conspericy to turn the US into a Orwellian 1984. Just as Y2K destroyed the world, right?
Just a thought. One never knows with these things.
Disclamer - Opinion of Person
Ok, I might be going out on a limb here, but I'm pretty sure that this is wrong. I can just picture the head of the FBI trying to convey his argument to George Washington... it might go a little something like this: FBI: Yeah, were going to have to nix this deal... it compromises National Security.... Washington: Really, how's that? FBI: Well, ya see, we can't listen in on peoples conversations, and that presents a security risk to the American people.... Washington: So what your basically saying is that innovation , and people's rights to privacy should be waived when face with a possible security risk? FBI: Basically yes... Washington: You don't see any problems with this? FBI: Not really no.... Washinton: So, if I read you right, what your saying is that your right to the ability to listen in on private communication supercedes the right of the American public to engage in private communications.... FBI: Yep. Washinton: Here we go again... Now, I don't think this is in the best interests of the American people... this is in the best interests of law enforcement. Correct me if I'm wrong by shouldn't the FBI exist to serve the best interest of the American public?
You as a private citizen or a corporation cannot 'tap' someone's line at all. You can 'tape' conversations as long as all parties know that they are being taped. Law enforcement agencies must be granted permission to 'tap' a phone line and the tapes/transcripts are admissible in court and they don't have to have the periodic beep on a 'tap'.
"Say, boss, [beep] I dumped the bodies in the river like you [beep] said."
"What's that beeping sound, Rocco? You developing a speech impediment?"
Nah. I think the bad guys are smarter than that.
--
As a matter of fact, I am a lawyer. But I play an actor on TV.
As you may or may not know, approximately a year ago, Verio purchased 56 (or so) companies around the United States and has been trying to "integrate" them into their Borg collective, so-to-speak. No harm intended.
The buy-outs of these companies resulted in Verio handing over (to managers or higher-ups only) very VERY large sums of stock at a very VERY miniscule stock price. Therefore, these managers will be quite pissed if the NTT deal does not go through.
I personally know of a few individuals (again, managers) who are already making plans to buy houses and other expensive investments with their stock money. Hence why the NTT deal is so important to them.
As for employees, well, let's just say that Verio believes strongly in EBITDA (search for the word if you don't know what it is). The concept of EBITDA is "profit before expense," which basically boils down to that full-time employees are "expensive" (and affect profit severely), but that contractors are not. Verio writes off contractors as a business expense (yeah, interesting, isn't it), while full-time employees who are either fired or leaving are not being replaced. I still do not understand how a company can morally (or legally) work like this. As stated by hundreds upon hundreds of economic analysts, EBITDA DOES NOT WORK. Period.
Onto the NTT aspect...
To be entirely honest, I met personally with the two Japanese individuals who originally proposed the NTT-Verio deal be done. I have to say that both of these individuals are EXTREMELY friendly, and they respect their employees greatly. Employees in Japan are NOT expendible, and both of these individuals made it very clear to myself that without employees the company wouldn't be anything at all. Verio, however, takes the entire opposite approach.
So, honestly, as an employee, the NTT deal means nothing. We get nothing out of it; our management doesn't change, we don't get raises, we don't get better benefits (or worse benefits). Nothing changes.
I'd love to work for NTT (in Japan) though. They have a lot of respect, not to mention (something any geek will appreciate) last year they spent over 3 billion (yes, billion) on just R&D. That's pretty damn cool.
But... if you're a manager, you'll be seeing the word "PREMIUMS" all over the inside of your eyelids while sleeping.
So, back to the issue of stock. That's what this whole thing is all about. It seems the Slashdot goons are unable to focus on what the real point of government involvement is about -- it's not about wiretapping, it's simply about penis length.
The US government is "scared" that Japan would be able to invest in American stock (Verio), but that Americans would not be able to invest in Japanese stock (NTT).
Like I said, it's a penis war. Leave it to America to be excessively paranoid.
Leave it to Slashdot to blow it out of preportion and focus on the wrong aspect of the merger.
Just my $0.02.
CALEA stands for Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act. You can get more information on the FBI website. You can also get lots of links by doing a simple google search.
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How exactly does the FBI expect to tap an OC-192?
(or OC-48 or OC-3 for that matter)? This has
to be total BS.
They are probably worried about the reverse
problem, i.e. NTT sniffing packets too and from
US Government servers and networks.
Article 21 of the Japanese Constitution does seem on its face to prohibit wiretapping, at least by the government. However, NTT is arguably not part of the Japanese gov't and not subject to contitutional restrictions.
Remember that most large-scale Japanese corporations operate in the keiretsu system, where affiliated companies pass information, arrange financing, and generally cut deals with each other.
Also remember that we're speculating about NTT's actions in the USA, outside the real of Japanese constitutional protections. It's well known that the USA taps everyone it can outside its borders, thought this would be illegal at home.
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
This tends to support my position that (JonKatz's blather about the "Corporate Republic" notwithstanding), the tension between Megacorp and State is likely to have the same beneficial effect as the medieval tension between Church and Crown. The fact that neither side has a particularly appealing agenda is less important than the existence of two (or more) great powers making life difficult for one another.
/.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
The fact that the FBI seem so worried about this sort of thing suggests that telephoine tapping is extremely useful, and really quite common.
Since its so well known that suspected criminals phones are tapped, why do criminals communicate by phone at all, when "Meet me at" type conversations and runners would be so much more secure.
This situation highlights the need for users to be more aware of personal privacy, encryption, etc... I'm perfectly fine having the government attempting to eavesdrop on the Internet. Most of the stuff I do online would never in a million years interest the FBI/CIA/NSA. Anything that I do want to keep private (note this is not synonymous with illegal) I use PGP for. If people think we're going to get the government to drop their surveillance of the general populace, they need to put their head back in the sand. I can see the both sides of the issue -- privacy vs. government protection/national security. The govt ought to just slap a stipulation on the sale and be done with it. End user awareness and education is the key to this situation, not moaning and anger over the government's eavesdropping.
Some people take their .sig way too seriously
a) Well, first of all security agencies wiretap.
It is normal and necessary, there are quite real
investigational needs that have to be fulfilled.
In a better world where nobody would do anything
illegal this would not be needed, but in our
crappy little universe this is a necessity.
b) US jurisdiction only covers US based servers,
services etc. So in case of quite legitimate need
for wiretapping they may not be able to get
access due to services being provided abroad.
c) This also means that those abroad may have
easier access wiretapping traffic here -
legitimate security concern even among
best of friends in our world.
Anyhow, think about this - when was the last
time YOU had anything on the wire that may
be of interest to any government agency,
really now? Nobody gives a damn about us and
our little lives..get on with it..
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This is a flat-out admission by the FBI that they believe that the US owns and controls the Internet
I have to disagree with the assumptions you seem to be making. I don't see this as an issue of control (not that there aren't some issues there) but to enable the FBI to investigate criminal activity. Several people have mistakenly seen this as an attempt to control or prevent certain activities. Law enforcement agencies don't actually prevent crimes any more than fire departments prevent fires. Both respond after the fact. We get lulled into a belief that 'the system' will keep the bad guys from doing their bad deeds to us. This despite the evening news and maxims like, "There's never a cop around when you need one." It's the old idea that those sorts of things happen to other people.
I do think, as others have pointed out, that there may also be concern with regard to industrial espionage.
--
As a matter of fact, I am a lawyer. But I play an actor on TV.
Okay, let's think about this.
For starters, this is about whether they'll have the capability, not the legal right, to tap. Legally they still need authorization.
With that in mind, lets look at a few cases to see if there's cause for alarm.
First case, say you're talking dirty to your girlfriend on your phone or having cybersex with some 40 year-old-guy in France, you probably don't want anyone tapping your line. You want your right to privacy. Understandable. You're not doing anything illegal, but it's potentially embarassing.
Well first of all, admit that you've already lost. Unless you are amazingly proficient and running a high security system and encrypting all your network traffic, somebody determined WILL be able to read your conversations. Be it a script kiddie or someone at NSA, if you're using a large network, somebody can compromise it. No law for the FBI is going to change that.
Having gotten over that, realize that the FBI is the least of your worries. The FBI doesn't care about your girlfriend, and they're not going to publish transcripts of you and the French guy. If you have anything to worry about it's your fellow citizens who are probably right now expressing concern over the FBI being able to tap them.
Second case, you're doing something minorly illegal. Warez, mp3s, fetching porn when you're not 18, whatever. Again, the FBI really doesn't care. They're not going to routinely tap random lines in the hopes of catching people like you, then arrest you based on monitored net traffic. It's way too much of a legal hassle to get approval (try going to a judge saying "we want to tap his line because the stuff we already got off his tapped line is really incriminating") and go through all the requisite paperwork to bring in these extremely minor criminals.
Third and final case. You're doing something REALLY not-kosher. You're a major kiddie-porn trafficker (the boogey-man of our day, like the 2000 internet equivalent of Nazis) or major Mafia or a drug lord or you're planning to blow up a building. Yes, be afraid. The FBI will have access to your net traffic. They will use that access, they will pay close attention.
However, if you're organized, like Mafia or drug lords, you're probably already encrypting the hell out of your traffic anyway, so odds are the FBI isn't going to be able to crack it easily.
So that pretty much narrows the list of people who should really be worried by this down to:
Kiddie-porn traffickers
Terrorists
And I doubt you'll find much sympathy if you're one of those.
What? Where does stuff like this come from? Most states have laws that require that when a private citizens records their own phone conversations the recorder should beep periodically to remind the other party that they are being taped. However, no such requirement exists for a law enforcement wiretap. I don't think the FBI would worry about wiretaps very much if they had to announce them in advance to the suspects. I can't imagine that they would be very effective if they told the crooks when they were tapping them. Crooks may not be the smartest bunch, but they are able to function at some level.
Now, there are requirements that they inform people after the fact that they have been recorded by a wiretap. But, this can happen many months after the call itself. I don't know how careful they are about actually doing this, however. After all, if you didn't know you were tapped in the first place, you wouldn't know that you hadn't been informed.
From the FBI link:
CALEA . . . is to preserve law enforcement's ability to conduct lawfully-authorized electronic
surveillance . . .
I like how the law authorizes themselves power when they feel the need for it. The quote continued to disclaim thier reach of power with:
the public's right to privacy
How is an individual supposed to have privacy against a resourceful automated electronic self authorizing law body with immense resources including a wide range usage of deadly force and property seizure such as the FBI.
A person's house could be the next Waco if that individual might seem to object thier methods of questioning his existance.
A LEA could get "taps" on the dial-up or other connection points, but it makes it much tougher to snag that email as the monitored person could dial in from anywhere to any connection point to get their mail. The FBI much rather be able to have the server capture all mail traffic, so they have only one place to go.
This general concern holds for other telecommunications providers. CALEA is the requirements for providing access to telephone, paging, two-way radio, and cell phone systems for "tapping" by law enforcement agencies.
With fines of up to 10K $US per day to service providers who can not provide a CALEA port when served with a tap request, the government is serious about being able to monitor all communications of someone they are investigating. Moving the servers of a US provider outside of the US makes it harder to use that hammer.