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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."
Well, because there are some legitimate reasons to tap communications of any sort (as in, got a judge to OK it), I figure that it was bound to happen at some point. Though it still creeps me out and makes me eagerly anticipate a nice encrypted VoIP client...
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
you buy a couple of those Cisco ATA186 VOIP phone adapters (POTS phone jack on one side, ethernet on the other, about $150 each) and route its IP side through your favorite IPSEC VPN box (Netgear makes one for about $150)? Don't you get an untappable phone? Feds would have to ban routing voice traffic through a VPN in order to stop that.
Can VoIP be encrypted in such a way that even if it is intercepted, it is useless? What is to stop someone from writing code that does that? Or will the NSA get involved?
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
I just want to point out that the FBI can currently tap VoIP calls either at the customer side using Carnivore or at the provider's PSTN trunks thanks to CALEA. Really all they're asking for is an easier way to do it.
That's why I'll continue to encrypt all important (and unimportant!) conversations. For email I always use GPG (regardless of how important the message is). For VoIP, if I ever use it, I'll be sure to send the voice data through encrypted channels. Frankly, there's no excuse for not encrypting everything. Let them make laws; beat them with the tech.
:)
/dev/urandom) to your friends :) That will never be illegal, and encrypted data is the same as random data without the key!
And when they outlaw the tech, remember that you can learn how to write encryption software yourself. See Ciphersaber. There you'll learn to write your very own crypto code, and you'll remember how to do it again. I did it a few months ago and could still code something decent up
So don't worry about this. Just encrypt, and when encryption becomes illegal send lots of random data (netcat
My other car is first.
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.
The right to privacy is spread implicitly throughout the Bill of Rights. But when the United States Constitution was framed, the Founding Fathers saw no need to explicitly spell out the right to a private conversation. That would have been silly. Two hundred years ago, all conversations were private. If someone else was within earshot, you could just go out behind the barn and have your conversation there. No one could listen in without your knowledge. The right to a private conversation was a natural right, not just in a philosophical sense, but in a law-of-physics sense, given the technology of the time.
But with the coming of the information age, starting with the invention of the telephone, all that has changed. Now most of our conversations are conducted electronically. This allows our most intimate conversations to be exposed without our knowledge. Cellular phone calls may be monitored by anyone with a radio. Electronic mail, sent across the Internet, is no more secure than cellular phone calls. Email is rapidly replacing postal mail, becoming the norm for everyone, not the novelty it was in the past.
Until recently, if the government wanted to violate the privacy of ordinary citizens, they had to expend a certain amount of expense and labor to intercept and steam open and read paper mail. Or they had to listen to and possibly transcribe spoken telephone conversation, at least before automatic voice recognition technology became available. This kind of labor-intensive monitoring was not practical on a large scale. It was only done in important cases when it seemed worthwhile. This is like catching one fish at a time, with a hook and line. Today, email can be routinely and automatically scanned for interesting keywords, on a vast scale, without detection. This is like driftnet fishing. And exponential growth in computer power is making the same thing possible with voice traffic.
Perhaps you think your email is legitimate enough that encryption is unwarranted. If you really are a law-abiding citizen with nothing to hide, then why don't you always send your paper mail on postcards? Why not submit to drug testing on demand? Why require a warrant for police searches of your house? Are you trying to hide something? If you hide your mail inside envelopes, does that mean you must be a subversive or a drug dealer, or maybe a paranoid nut? Do law-abiding citizens have any need to encrypt their email?
What if everyone believed that law-abiding citizens should use postcards for their mail? If a nonconformist tried to assert his privacy by using an envelope for his mail, it would draw suspicion. Perhaps the authorities would open his mail to see what he's hiding. Fortunately, we don't live in that kind of world, because everyone protects most of their mail with envelopes. So no one draws suspicion by asserting their privacy with an envelope. There's safety in numbers. Analogously, it would be nice if everyone routinely used encryption for all their email, innocent or not, so that no one drew suspicion by asserting their email privacy with encryption. Think of it as a form of solidarity.
Senate Bill 266, a 1991 omnibus anticrime bill, had an unsettling measure buried in it. If this non-binding resolution had become real law, it would have forced manufacturers of secure communications equipment to insert special "trap doors" in their products, so that the government could read anyone's encrypted messages. It reads, "It is the sense of Congress that providers of electronic communications services and manufacturers of electronic communications se
This message is encrypted with Quad ROT-13 to protect the author's copyright under the DMCA.
At least with this fact in play we'll probably see some more decent voip encryption.
Wouldn't any real criminal run his VoIP through a VPN or some other encrypted tunnel, thus making difficult for the Feds to know that it is a VoIP session, let alone decrypt it and understand it? See, the problem with PCs is that they are general purpose devices that allow you to execute arbitrary algorithms -- or even add proprietary hardware to do hardware encryption. So, other than knowing what IP address a suspect is talking to, what good is the wiretap going to do them?
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
How do they propose to tap VOIP conversations over private networks? I can understand how federal regulations might get them permission to tap into the networks of the growing VOIP phone providers, but a lot of people (companies, geeks) set up their own internal VOIP networks over IPSEC, secure VLAN's and other such things that would be nearly(?) impossible to detect as VOIP traffic. Not to mention p2p type VOIP clients like those built into the various instant messenging programs that are, well, peer to peer, and don't go through some central server.
Do you really need reason for beer? Wingman Brewers
I almost feel like setting up two VoIP lines, using one to call the other, then have a perpetually repeating recording playing over the line with every keyword and phrase they could possibly be looking for interspersed with me screaming "HA HA! GOTCHA! GET BACK TO DOING SOMETHING USEFUL!" .
Hang on, there's a knock at [Lost comm with host]
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
I think it is a lost cause to try to stem the abuse of freedom and rights that government snoops are swarming around like coyotes around some road kill. But VoIP should be much easier for the Common Man to encrypt a la PGP (yes, I understand it would be some other software solution...) I know, I know, why should we have to? Well, I imagine just discussion of this issue could get you labeled as providing material benefit to "terrorists."
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
ipsec, ssh tunneling, and VPN configurations can all prevent this with no change to existing code.
Is anyone else outraged that the feds spent $63 million just wiretapping phones for a black market that they created? 1.) Make a drug black-market. 2.) Spend $63 million wiretapping phone investigating the market. 3.) ??? 4.) profit!
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
That's nice for you, but I wouldn't trade my privacy in silly conversations for the (illusion of) safety in America. Neither would a lot of other people. The problem is, you can't just trade your privacy by endorsing wiretaps. You're trading everyone's privacy. Perhaps you'd like to write a letter allowing the government to listen to all the conversations they want, read your emails, and rifle through your files, but don't speak for the rest of the country.
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!
Not true. I have nothing to hide - I still don't wnat Uncle Sam listening to everything I do. Some of us still believe in privacy.
On a side note, sometimes people have things to hide with good reason. A number of the founding fathers lived as long as they did because of Privacy. A number of blacks were better off because records could be kept from corrupt local governments. People have been persecuted by scientology for speaking out against it - sometimes privacy is the only safeguard. Can you honestly say you trust every single person who has access to your data (government or not) to act in your best interest, or at least the best interest of the country. Here's a hint: if the government can beat it, someone else can too.
I'll take my privacy, thank you very much. The only way to stop power from being abused is to not grant it in the first place. Our society is based on individual freedom - for example, the whole "guilty until proven innocent" thing. Our constitution is set up to let the guilty go free rather than imprison the innocent, should a conflict arise. Would placing the burden of proof on the defense (or eliminating the trial altogether) mean fewer criminals went free? Of course! Would more innocent mean be imprisoned? Of course.
Is it worth it? Hardly. From what I hear, though, if you like that sort of thing, Cuba is not hard to get into.
Contact Me (got tired of viruses emailing me).
through your favorite IPSEC VPN box (Netgear makes one for about $150)?
Probibly, eventually, manufacturers will be directed to provide "backdoors" much like cryptography schemes that the NSA et al have tried to push on the public.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
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.
This would, of course, be a terrific argument in my mind, to just get over ourselves and find a better way to deal with drugs; i.e. make them legal in such a way so that people can have a good time and not pose too much of a threat to society (such as the laws pertaining to alcohol). 'Course that's just my opinion, I could be wrong.
What makes you think that Uncle Sam is going to listen to "everything you do"? Remember, this law doesn't give the gov't carte blanche to listen to the conversations of anyone it chooses to. It must show a court of law that there is sufficient reason that you are using the phone lines to commit a felony. All this law does is put VoIP on the same legal standing as traditional phone lines, with regards to wiretapping.
Equating the gov't trying to stop the illegal actions of mobsters and drug dealers with a police state is pointless hyperbole. There may be issues with wiretapping laws, but your posting certainly doesn't convince me. If there is anything wrong with this statute you'll have to find a better arguement.
C - A language that combines the speed of assembly with the ease of use of assembly.
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.
Sure, for a few conversations between buddies, encryption would baffle an individual. However, this is the US government-with tons of money to throw around...they'll find ways around encryption. Usama's satellite phone was "encrypted", but the NSA could crack it easily enough. If it becomes a great enough need, the government would find out how to decrypt it. They wouldn't brute force either. When the British found the Enigma machine, the US and British intelligence services reverse engineered it and then used it for the remainder of the war. Same thing would happen here: If the case was high-profile enough, the FBI would find the program used and reverse engineer it so they could thwart the encryption. I'm willing to bet that Nautlius (Blowfish) has already been cracked by the CIA/FBI/NSA, and that they have their own proprietary software for VoIP tapping. The only way to avoid it would be to design your own encryption software, and then make sure it doesn't fall into the US Military's/FBI's/NSA's/CIA's hands. Those agencies employ some of the best hackers/programmers in the field, and it would be near impossible to keep multiple VoIP conversations encrypted without changing software every conversation (and even then, you would have to have every conversation based on the understanding that those may be decrypted later.) This is because of the open structure of the internet.
The unfortunate problem is that since we have crap like the Patriot Act, it isn't as hard for the government to get whatever access it likes. By now, they pretty much DON'T need a reason anymore...
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.
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
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.
Note that this article of the consitution does not say no searches and seizures. Just unreasonable ones. The courts have determined that with probable cause (and your definition is wrong, btw) a telephone may be tapped.
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.
Yes, because clearly the Founding Fathers hated it when the British would tap their telephones....
C - A language that combines the speed of assembly with the ease of use of assembly.
Why not develop a cellphone device that changed the sound going in and going out?
For instance, you could enter a keycode into a program, and it would re-format all voice data into meaningless noise without person X on the other end using the same (or a permutation of) the same code.
This would make wiretaps useless without... the code.
I'm not saying legalize everything, just treat addiction to hard drugs as a medical issue and let medical doctors prescribe for maintance while helping their patients. Marijuana (something much safer than alcohol) needs to be legalized and taxed.
Get the facts about marijuana. End the drug war now.
"And a voice was screaming: 'Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?'" - HST
I won't mind as long as:
1) they have a warrant
2) they take the cost upon their own shoulders and not upon the company or individuals concerned.
What this means is that we must be vigilant about the laws surrounding warrants and how they are obtained.
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
Personally, it seems to me that VoIP is pretty cut and dry in this matter: it is a "telecommunications carrier". It is simply a new medium for the same thing we did on copper lines.
The most difficult (and dangerous) aspect is things like IM services with voice capacity. Actually, anyone two people with microphones and email could evade the police and FBI pretty easily by recording small sound files and emailing them (possibly even encrypting them to be sure). In such a case as this, where communications begin to forgo the use of any third-party to facilitate the information between two people, we will see a lot of hot debate.
When communications as distributed and "P2P" as this become more common place, many questions will be raised. But, we must look at how things would have to be implemented, before we can judge the rules that must be applied to them. Can we mandate that wiretaps must be available even for peer-to-peer exchange of communications? Would we then need to make requests directly to those being tapped, or those they are in contact with, stating they must, for a specified time, transmit all communications to the authoritive agencies for monitoring? Surely, no one would comply! Then, should the ISPs and backbone servers scan all packets for personal communications to or from individuals on a national "Tapped List"? But, what of all the data they would have to peak into to find these few, when most they have no right to touch, except to pass along?
We sail to rough waters. I pray for us all.
Question
http://www.ironfroggy.com/
The good:
--If there is a wiretap, they are only getting your conversation, and not ever piece of data your computer spits out. It looks like they would need a different warrant for that too.
--The tap would be located not at your ISP, but at your VOIP provider. This helps guarantee privacy for the people not specified in the warrant.
--This places VOIP on more of an equal footing as traditional phone services. If they are legally the same for what they have to provide the cops, they could then argue they are the same legally when it comes to their protection as common carriers.
The bad:
--The VOIP companies would have to re-wire their networks so that all conversations go through a tappable trunk line. That, or they would have to set up infrastructure to siphon off individuals phone calls to a 3rd location (which is what I would prefer. Let the VOIP provider pull a copy of the conversation off the trunk line instead of the cops). This means more $ needed in development and implementation.
--Requlation may (ok, probably will) stifle innovation. By regulating things like how a wiretap is to be done, it will be harder for open source and closed source products to work in multiple countries. This then leads to problems with interoperability between national networks.
Overall, I don't see this as too alarming.
Now, if that makes sense to anyone, could you please explain it to me? I think I've confused myself.
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.
If criminals were smart, they would be running telcoms or energy companies, or on Wall Street, hyping Internet stocks. Oh, wait....
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Realistically, all the feds are trying to do is keep pace with the advance of technology. They've had the ability to tap phones for as long as they have been around. Even if they were able to listen to and record every single call made, someone still has to transcribe the call. Even with the transcriptions done, someone else has to put the pieces together to make it useful intelligence, otherwise it remains valueless information. Intel work gets HARDER when the mass of data increases exponentially.
Many of the people responding to this thread are missing the big picture.
There will always be a screw-you-I'm-doing-this-the-OSS-way-with-crypto solution available. What does this solution cost? Well you might think it's free.
It isn't.
By adopting some OSS mechanism to communicate with whomever you choose, you impose a burden on the other party, namely, they have to install and have access to the same (or compatible) OSS VoIP software.
While this might be great for you and your hacker buddies, it won't help you call your parents, grandma, or your fiancee. It also won't help you call your doctor, lawyer, investment partner, stock broker or bank.
Wait, there's more going on here.
There are technical implication for the service providers. Most of the better designed VoIP protocols (like SIP, as an example) are all about establishing sessions. There is a location service somewhere that a user-agent (UA) (phone) can find, based on the number or URI that you call. This location service will either proxy your connection request to the other client, or it will redirect your user-agent to contact the other party directly. (Think HTTP 302 response code -- in fact -- SIP uses the same structure).
Once your UA has contacted the other party, some handshaking happens where you try to figure out what CODECs you will use to exchange audio, video, facsimile, IMs etc. Then end result is a collection of sessions directly between the user-agents that called one another.
Let me make that REALLY clear. Beyond the proxy / location service, the VSP (voice provider) is not in ANY way involved in the media flows. Why should it be? It doesn't care.
Enter CALEA requirements -- which are really poorly laid our I might add -- suddenly the VSP must carry the media and relay it to the other party and optionally duplicate each CODEC frame and send it to some black box (or red box as the case may be).
This has serious consequences on bandwidth consumption for VSPs.
But they can just do this when there is a tap! (You object)
And I counter with the fact that such an arrangement violates the CALEA requirements that a party subject to monitoring cannot know that they are under surveillance. End result? All media MUST flow through a choke point from which it could be duplicated.
This has catastrophic consequences on the bandwidth a VSP can expect to need to meet their service levels.
This may or may not be a Good Thing. I think it is NOT a Good Thing. One thing is certain, this issue is a very Material Thing for VSPs.
It's not the easiest program to use, but it does work well. It's development has been discontinued, but you can still get the source code if you get it quickly. I'd like very much to see someone pick up its development, or to at least use its technology in a new program.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
You may tap my phone. You may monitor my VOIP. You may intercept my e-mails. You may pillage my mail box and scrounge through my trash can. I accept all of these violations of my civil rights so that you can employ one more FBI agent and help stave off George's hemorrhaging unemployment figures. It's a form of entertainment for me, to say silly things in these mediums, just to amuse the man sitting in the van down the street, sipping cold coffee and eating stale donuts.
But I'll be damned if you're touching my carrier pigeons. I will feed them steroids and fit them with armor, if necessary, to keep you from interfering with my God-given right to private communications.
Isn't SSL designed for a streaming connection? In the case of VoIP, you need to have lots of small (10-40 bytes) chunks encrypted intependently (because some may get lost), so it's completely different than a TCP connection.
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
the spooks are already required to disconnect (or ditch-and-not-listen-to any recording) the instant they realize it's a call that is unrelated to the matter being investigated.
So I can, for example, call my dealer, talk a few minutes about my hemaroids, and then I place my order. Wait until that gets out!
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
Firstly, I want to make it clear that I do value my privacy, and it is (or would be, at least) comforting to know that my communications are private. I'm with all of you on that.
But what do you expect authorities to do? These people have jobs, they have responsibilities. FOr FBI agents, heir responsibility is to catch criminals, often drug dealers. (Let's not get into whether that's a worthwhile goal--for marijuana, it's questionable, but for lots of other things, not so much.) How are they supposed to do that? These things are all about connections between people. Exchanges and conversations between individuals. Without tapping conversations, their only feasible way to EVER catch practically anybody is if they get a tip from another person, and then they would still have a hard time convicting them.
Of course, there are other things tapping is used for as well. Important things. Things that might be even harder to find through other means than drug deals.
So I don't like this, ultimately, but I can't find a way around it, if these people are going to do their jobs, and as such I think it's unfair to get mad at some of these people for doing what they do.
Just a thought.
Chill. If murdering babies in vivo is socially acceptable behavior, then prison rape would have to be considered hilarious.
>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
Of those 2.2 million calls reported that were tapped, how many were actually criminals? And how many other calls were tapped illegally by the same groups? It sounds like X-Files to me. The truth is out there.
For example, I have heard from former PacBell CO technicians that the wiretap and pen trace rate in the Los Angeles area is staggeringly high -- in some offices, upwards of 10% of the circuits have some sort of "tap" installed (From a remote terminal, a tap looked the same as a simple trace device that only records the number dialed, not the voice traffic on the line).
Unless of course the reason there is a tap on your line is not to produce admissable criminal evidence, but because you (or the line) a politcal activist, a nosy reporter, associated with an unpopular political organization, or just chose to support the wrong candidate in the last election... If you want to know more about government abuse of wiretaps (and increase the likelyhood of being the subject of a wiretap yourself), just do a little research into the past and present of communications intercepts and abuse by the public and private sector -- COINTELPRO, CALEA, RISSNET, MAGLOCLEN, IN-Q-TEL, Takefuji, DSC1000.Or just pick up a newspaper and read about the neverending stream of FBI bugging devices found in Philadelphia over the past three months...
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
The only way to guarantee being able to tap voip is to generally outlaw and/or regulate cryptography, such as only allowing very weak cryptography, or mandating a scheme where all keys have to be known with the state authorities.
At the same time, such a system (key escrow) will make use of cryptography across national borders impossible, since there is no state or supranational authority (such as the UN) that would be trusted by all national states to keep the keys needed for decryption.
Can you imagine France to use cryptography using keys known by the US authorities? Can you imagine the US using a system whose keys are entrusted to some U.N. authority? In the latter case, if the US would want to get a key in order to decrypt some domestic voip conversation, would the UN allow it?
In other words: if the US really wants to keep this possibility, the only option is to either outlaw cryptography totally, or to mandate a scheme that can only work domestically and outlawing all other forms of cryptography.
Either way, international ecommerce is killed.
I think that the US autorities, whether they like it or not, have to be prepared for a time where they can no longer tap communications at all, or they must accept a severe blow to the global (and thus national) economy.
with trillons of $ at stake.
The drug cartel can buy what it wants to protect it self, and they do.
The drug cartells have so much cash they can afford to design/build their own sat and launch from china for their own private voice calls under a fake company designed for normal sat calls or even just launch from russia.
On the ground, they have so much cash they can hire the best guns in town (esp after all these unemployed ppl) to make their own high tech russian design encryptos tiny phones. And they do.
THe only way the big cartells can be touched is with the military, even then the US isnt going to go thumping down 5 countries and doing it.
Even after all this, after 30-60 years of drug dealing and using all profits to make legit businesses and reinvesting in markets and whatnot, its estimated up to 20% of the world GDP is derived from drug trafficing, so tearing all those down would just cause a massive collapse, you cant just seize 20% of all businesses in the US and 'resell em' at bargin prices. The drug barons will trash/burn their old businesses down after being seized and even after that would probably hunt down the new owners.
Bottom line, legalize all drugs, (no cant do that, the old fatcats dont like drugs) but then the CIA would loose 1/2 its revenue.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
80% of the federal wiretaps are to enforce drug laws? Sounds like reducing or eliminating the relevant drug laws would drastically reduce the need for wiretaps, helping to alleviate many of the other issues surrounding the liberal use of government eavesdropping.
It isn't always just perpetrators who cause the problems and impose costs on society. It's also the mere fact that our lawmakers have decided to make particular activities illegal. Not only do we spend billions enforcing a variety of behavior-restricting rules, we end up creating additional secondary rules that further restrict the rights of everybody and increase the power of the government. The copyright system is another good example. Reducing copyright protection would reduce the need to monitor and control every little electronic activity anybody performs, and to trend toward criminalizing any technology that might threaten the business activities of copyright holders.
If you suggest eliminating drug or copyright laws, people will immediately envision the streets littered with semi-conscious heroin addicts, or a world without music, literature, film or techical innovation because nobody has any incentive to create anything. Probably neither extreme would actually happen. On the other hand, a picture of a world where average people routinely curtail what they say and do for fear that they might look suspicious to the ubiquitous surveillance system is much more probable. There's already an empirical basis for it.
We should examine the root laws that spawn these secondary restrictions and determine which ones are really worth enforcing, not just in terms of the financial cost but in terms of the freedoms lost.
I'd just make it illegal to do anything illegal. Problem solved!
One wonders then how it is they were able to deal with crime before the advent of technology.
:-)
Actually, they didn't have too hard a time. They found the suspect, and questioned him - using whatever methods were deemed appropriate at the time - until they had a confession.
Easy as pie. No technology needed at all.
Forensics was initially very unpopular with law enforcement, as it meant a sh*tload of extra work, seemingly with no visible payoff. People who advocated it had a hard time keeping their rank.
Power corrupts you know.
I think that was my point.
Power doesn't corrupt neither more nor less than in previous generations, anyway. There is nothing new under the sun when it comes to how good or bad humans behave. Especially in a group.
I'm only half joking... I suspect that the police in the USA do this just as often as the police in my own country. Dutch police have often been caught performing unauthorised taps (or illegal searches), not to gather evidence obviously, but to find clues, leads, and accomplices to the crime.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
They always use false arguments to get surveillance society.
Quote from article:
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.
Without such mandatory rules, the two agencies predicted in a letter to the FCC last month that "criminals, terrorists, and spies (could) use VoIP services to avoid lawfully authorized surveillance." The letter also was signed by the Drug Enforcement Administration.
I have put the following argument many times:
Ask Security Services in the US, UK, Indonesia (Bali) or anywhere for that matter, to deny this:
Internet surveillance, using Echelon, Carnivore or back doors in encryption, will not stop terrorists communicating by other means - most especially face to face or personal courier.
Terrorists will have to do that, or they will be caught.
Perhaps using mobile when absolutely essential, saying - "Meet you in the pub Monday" (human bomb to target A), or Tuesday (target B) or Sunday (abort).
The Internet has become a tool for government to snoop on their people - 24/7.
The terrorism argument is a dummy - total bull*.
INTERNET SURVEILLANCE WILL NOT BE ABLE TO STOP TERRORISTS - THAT IS SPIN AND PROPAGANDA
This propaganda is for several reasons, including: a) making you feel safer b) to say the government are doing something and c) the more malicious motive of privacy invasion.
Please see any one of my posts on this topic.
police intercepted nearly 2,200,000 conversations with court approval
how many did they intercept without court approval?
I wonder how much of this is a moot point because if they see 'suspicious' IP traffic whats to stop them from making like the RIAA and finding out who you are and then just placing an old fashioned microphone bug in your house? Even the best encryption doesnt do much against them listening to your voice from the next room... the solution to this kind of problem lies far away from just stopping them intercepting your email... we really do need to start holding our law enforcement more accountable again, like back in the days when you needed warrants for these things. Revising (or removing) the patriot acts might be a start
pass without a hitch.
You're kidding, right?
Amendment I
(a) Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion
A bill "revoking" congress's power to add a refference to God to the pledge? Like that's gonna pass today? Conservatives would have a shit-fit.
(b) Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech
A bill forbidding congress to ban flag burning? No complaints from anyone there, LOL! And don't forget the internet "child-protection" laws that keep getting struck down as unconstitution? How many times in a row can those idiots pass the same freaking unconstituional law?
(c) Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom... of the press
Heck, now with the internet anyone and everyone can qualify as a member of the "press". Legislators generally have no love for the press, and expecially now they want to hold the press "responsible" "in our time of crisis" (terrorism). They would not take kindly to a bill "restricting" their ability to do anything.
(d) Congress shall make no law... abridging... the right of the people peaceably to assemble
Gay rights parades? KKK marches? Anti-war protesters? Globalisation protests?
The legislature loves go as far as the courts will allow them to in setting all sorts of rules, regulations, and permits on peaceful public assembly.
(e) Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom... to petition the government for a redress of grievances
Such people are lunatics, fanatics, and troublemakers stalking and harrasing public officials.
Amendment II
Yep, a problem like you said.
Amendment III
No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.
Ok, this one just seems archaic. I still don't think they'd appreciate restrictions being imposed on them "in our time of crisis" (terrorism).
Amendment IV
Forbidding law enforcement and intelligence agencies from doing their jobs execept with the prior permission of the courts? Good freaking luck! This one guts pretty much every relevant law since 9/11, wire tapping, search warrants, Carnivore, all sorts of stuff. It also guts the expedited subpoena powers granted to copyright holders' by the DMCA. It's none too helpfull for the "War on Drugs" searches and seiures either. Law enforcement loves their new powers to seize and sell "drug related" property and they never even need to bring a case, much less get a conviction. Law enforcement loves that one as a money-maker.
Amendment V
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime... blah blah blah
Can you say "terrorists"? I knew you could!
nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself
Can you say "give me your encryptions keys"?
Amendment VI
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial... yada yada yada
"Criminal's rights" is a dirty word and "speedy" is a joke.
Amendment VII
In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved...
Hahahahahahahah! A jury trial over a twenty dollar issue! Weeee!
Amendment VIII
Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
Again, the dirty word "criminal rights". I'd say there are a few spots they've gone beyond the excessive line, but how about things like the public sex offender registries? They don't exactly cry over "pedophiles" being attacked, so long as the attack isn't on the wrong person.
Amendment IX
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Man, I really
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.