More on Cisco Building Surveillance into Routers

An anonymous reader writes "The company recently published a proposal that describes how it plans to embed 'lawful interception' capability into its products. Among the highlights: Eavesdropping 'must be undetectable,' and multiple police agencies conducting simultaneous wiretaps must not learn of one another. If an Internet provider uses encryption to preserve its customers' privacy and has access to the encryption keys, it must turn over the intercepted communications to police in a descrambled form." See our earlier story and the RFC for background.

Comments

It Is Your Freedom

[(X)Paul]

"They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Benjamin Franklin

Re:encryption

[JDizzy]

Freedom of speech in the USA is a myth. The 5th is true, but they just hold you in prision until you cooperate with the spooks, or get you via a special court ordered survalence warrent. Think Kevin Mitnik, or Nicodermo Shapiro. Another factor is that the notion of evidence being held against you is difficult when you have to prove that the crypto is, or *is not* evidence. There is an old thought experiment called the schrodingers cat box, and the same ideas apply. Is the evidence really evidence as soon as it is enciphered? Aka is the cat still alive once inserted into the catbox? The answer is both yes and no, but mainly no (the cat is dead to us, the crypto is inaccessible to the spooks). Its a really sticky situation. =)