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Feds Want to Tap VoIP
An anonymous reader writes "From the Globe and Mail: The FBI and the U.S. Justice Department have renewed their efforts to wiretap voice conversations carried across the Internet. Federal and local police rely heavily on wiretaps. In 2002, the most recent year for which information is available, police intercepted nearly 2,200,000 conversations with court approval, according to the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. Wiretaps for that year cost taxpayers $69.5 million, and approximately 80 per cent were related to drug investigations."
Nautlius is VoIP that uses Blowfish as the cipher.
Here's the home page. Get the software here. It hasn't been updated in awhile, but maybe now there's more of an incentive to do so.
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
1) Good luck identifying VoIP traffic
2) Good luck decrypting it
That is all.
"Smoking helps you lose weight - one lung at a time" -- A. E. Neumann
Feds have had the power to get secret warrents from judges from the FISA court since 1978. These judges have never denied American law enforcement a warrant to surveil a conversation.
So under the secret and unchecked FISA court, their powers are essentially unlimited.
This just means they are going through the formality of asking permission - if they don't get it, they'll get it through FISA anyway.
"The FCC should ignore pleas about national security and sophisticated criminals because sophisticated parties will use noncompliant VoIP, available open source and offshore," said Jim Harper of Privacilla.org, a privacy advocacy Web site. "CALEA for VoIP will only be good for busting small-time bookies, small-time potheads and other nincompoops."
Mr. Harper is absolutely correct, anyone with a little bit of sophistication can think of numerous ways around this legislation. Sorry Unlce Sam but the cat's out of the bag and there is no putting it back. Of course this will still be useful at catching small time drug dealers/users, and is another example of the drug war eating away at civil liberties.
From www.skype.com:
Skype is free and simple software that will enable you to make free calls anywhere in the world in minutes. Skype, created by the people who brought you KaZaA uses innovative P2P (peer-to-peer) technology to connect you with other Skype users. If you are tired of paying outrageous fees for telephony, Skype is for you!
Skype is quick and easy to install. Just download it, register, and within minutes you can plug in your PC headset and call your friends on Skype. Skype calls have excellent sound quality and are highly secure with end-to-end encryption. Best of all, Skype does not require you to reconfigure your firewall or router--it just works!
For the past few weeks Cryptome has featured a link to an FBI document detailing the means by which such surveillance might take place. This is all just additional evidence that those wanting real security must implement (or at least verify) it themselves.
I'd say they did say something about them:
<br><br>
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, <b>papers</b>, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated..."
<br><br>
I'd have to agree with the original poster that the only reason "conversations" isn't in the list is that no one imagined they could be unreasonably "searched" in the first place.
BTW, this same article is also available over on news.com.com. Anyway, lemme quote:
"The agencies have asked the Federal Communications Commission to order companies offering voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service to rewire their networks to guarantee police the ability to eavesdrop on subscribers' conversations."
Think about that one for a minute. How is a VoIP provider going to ensure that? There is only one way, turn off and disable all use of encryption in their VoIP network, unless the provider has access to the keys used.
Now think of IM networks, email servers, or just about any other Internet service. What are they going to do, outlaw all "non-sanctioned" client software using encryption? Are we gearing up for another Clipper Chip fiasco here?
FCC chairman Michael Powell has just come down on the side of VoIP providers saying, in part:
"Rapidly expanding voice communications over the Internet should be protected from excessive government regulation and from being pigeonholed as simple phone service". He goes on to say "harm from misregulation of VoIP could take "decades to fix."
"You [can] create a very hostile regulatory environment for voice-over-IP providers in the United States," Powell said.
He added "there is nothing to stop" the companies from moving to other countries and setting up computer systems to serve U.S. customers.
Exactly. Welcome to the Internet age.
And remember kids: Never trust a computer you can actually lift.
Hmm.. where have I heard this before?
Oh yeah.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. -- Fourth Amendment, Constitution of the United States
You should look at what "probable cause" used to mean, legally, in the United States. Tapping phones because they "suspect" somebody might be dealing drugs or be a terrorist is a long way from "probable cause." If you have "probable cause", you can (and should be able to) arrest somebody.
Nowadays, you don't even have to have "suspicion" that an individual can be involved. You can just tap all phones within x square yards of where drugs are being sold, and you can get a blanket warrant from a judge for everybody's phone.
Sounds pretty far away from what Jefferson et. al. had in mind when they penned those words.
Oh, and also, the Tenth comes to mind here.. nowhere in the Constitution is the Federal Government granted the right to tap telephones, therefore they don't have it. But that's another issue entirely.
taken from their "EULA"
(c) the skype software is utilized and distributed by third parties
which are unrelated to skyper. you acknowledge that installation of
the skype software will allow third parties who are not affiliated
with skyper the ability to access your computer ("outside parties").
you agree that skyper will not be liable for any damage, claim or loss
of any kind whatsoever, including but not limited to indirect,
incidental, special or consequential damages as stated in paragraph
9(a) above, resulting from any actions or omissions of the outside
parties.
Bottom line: Skype is a backdoor to the machines it is installed on -
for some undisclosed "third parties", not really what you want to hear when it comes to "secure" software egh
Actually, you're wrong, there are TRUE random number generators. There's no such thing as a SOFTWARE random number generator, but there are certainly random number generators, for example, a die (dice). They even make random number generators using the random movement of molecules as a source that can be hooked up to your computer for true random number generation.
they rely on known calculations that are extremely difficult (astronomically computationally expensive) to run backwards
Not quite. They're believed to be extremely difficult to run backwards. And there are some subtleties beyond that... read "A Personal View of Average-Case Complexity" from Russell Impagliazzo's page.
The shareholder is always right.
That would be the modern version of the emacs spook mode. Except the idea is to add a little spookiness to ALL conversations, making global keyword matching useless.
Contrary to another reply, the FBI doesn't need to prove squat to a judge anymore. The patriot act, and other related below-the-radar legislation, has things to the point where they pretty much just write a note to themselves saying, "this is terrorist related" -- but if they feel like being more official they can take it to a FISA judge, who have rubberstamped every single wiretap request ever made of them. Plus, if they aren't planning on using the info in court - you know a little COINTELPRO type action or worse, then they don't even have to go through any charade at all.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Technically, the PATRIOT acts still require a judge to ok the warrants. It's just that the criterion for issuing such warrants is much much lower now.
>as in, got a judge to OK it
Its not 2000 anymore. Thanks to both Patriot acts (didnt you know the second one was passed in a spending bill?) judicial oversight is mostly a thing of the past. The constitutional protections we took for granted are gone. I don't know why John Ashcroft has such a problem with judicial oversight, but he does and Congress and the Executive branch not SCOTUS (as far as I can tell) don't seem to care much.
This is a very different America than just a couple years ago and we've already seen abuses with the Patriot act being used in non-terror cases like drug trafficking. This just opens up the door to more COINTELPRO and other FBI abuses.
Encryption is more important now than ever. Maybe when the post-911 hysteria and power grabs are over we can have faith in an iota in due process but right now "trusting your government" is the worst thing you can do. Worse, all justifications for recording communication can apply to all communication. If you agree with this, why not put little mics on every person in the country?
Not to mention, last I checked PGPfone is a free download and easy to use. If criminals wanted to speak freely they could use that with impunity.
All I can say is I worked as a R&D software engineer for Nortel Networks, and this is nothing new.
We were (and they still are) developing voice-over-ip infrastructure equipment (Succession as they call it) and it was -required- that we implement a way for feds to tap the lines before we could even consider rolling out and selling the product.
There are a lot of gov't requirements behind the scenes than you might realize (and people can't talk about)...
The Australian Federal police, do more wiretaps than the American three letter abbreivated law divisions, yet this hasnt become an issue yet. Technology is slightly slower to take up than other countries, but it is getting there. The AFP have almost limiteless resources and It would be interesting to see their take on this situation. Hell they might already be doing it for all I know. References: http://www.alp.org.au/media/0902/20002179.html