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Pay To Have Your Phone Tapped
An anonymous reader writes "The Globe and Mail is running an interesting story over who should carry the cost of wiretapping (registration may be required): 'Canada's police chiefs propose a surcharge of about 25 cents on monthly telephone and Internet bills to cover the cost of tapping into the communications of terrorists and other criminals.'"
On your phone bill or through your taxes elsewhere.
Will he next ask for a tax for doughnuts?
I've also been looking for someone to kick me in the nuts, for $10/hr. Any takers?
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The phone company (Bell) will eventually win, jacking up prices at this suggestion for the supposed costs involved in the physicaly act of wiretapping. The government can't win, as it has a) the Bell Canada lobby against it and b) the canadian public totally against it. Eventually, these fees will be hidden in the cost of the phone service, per line, with no explanation, except that the fees will be diverted to a waretapping fund.
Police say they cannot - and should not - be forced to pay the often hefty costs involved in carrying out court-approved wiretaps and message searches, warning that investigations will suffer if they are expected to pick up the tab.
BS. Law enforcement is publically funded. If it's not funded enough, fine; we the voters will think about giving you more money. But making an end run around the process just because law enforcement in the new millenium is sooo expensive, thereby giving them a cash flow that actually encouragesthem to wiretap frivolously, is not an appropriate solution.
The opinions stated herein do not necessarily represent those of anybody at all. Deal with it.
Here's a version of the article with no registration required.
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Doesn't matter if it's a direct tax on your phone use, or an increase in your income tax (well, it does matter in terms of fairness - do the rich/poor/heavy-phone-users pay more or less of the total antiterrorism bill? - but ultimately, it is the mass of taxpayers that will bear the burden)
Who do you think pays for wiretapping, already? Magical fairies?
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
And with a burden shared equivalently by all carriers in this age of record corporate profits, who is going to pay for that? You will, but there will be no line-item on your bill letting you know. Just an across-the-board price hike.
Where your family will get billed for the bullet after you get executed.
On the other hand, who am I to talk, as the Netherlands is the country with the most wiretaps in the world annually, or at least the most open about the amount they wiretap.
- -- Truth addict for life.
I find it extremely stupid that law enforcement can pluck money from here and there. It makes it really difficult to determine all their income sources, and almost seems like laundering in a way. They should ONLY get money from direct taxation (property taxes, and maybe sales taxes if applicable), and that should be publically auditable.
Slashdot is proof that Sturgeon's Law applies to mankind.
**That's why I support opt-in taxes. Liberals want to pay for health care, environment, etc? Great, you do that. Me, I'll just check this box here for defense, and maybe that one for education.**
oh that would be great if people would plan ahead and there would be a cheap way to exclude those not paying from getting the benefits(don't want to pay for keeping the roads in good shape? well, lose your ability to receive any goods transferred on those roads.. the point being that a system like that would ultimately suck because people are short sighted and can't see the connections between things that make their daily life possible).
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
On top of this, there is also a $2.95 Telus long distance administration charge. This charge I'm told is for using Telus's long distance service, regardless if I make any long distance calls. I hear that if I switch long distance carriers, this administration charge increases.
They could easily add a $0.25 "security enhancement" charge to my phone bill.
This would be direct taxation, a 25 cent wiretapping tax. They will probably find a better name for it, Patriotic duty or something but it is still a direct tax.
Patriotism sucks.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
MRS. BUTTLE: Thank you. And this is my receipt for your receipt.
(sigh)
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"They do not preach that their god will rouse them, a little before the Nuts work loose." Kipling, 'The Sons of Martha'
Thank you Pringles can + 802.11g + VoIP + IPSec.
Wiretap? Have fun.
Tax? Try me.
My other car is first.
Guess who's already paying for that phone tapping? Here's a hint: it sure ain't the criminals, for the most part.
Duh.
Only on slashdot can a posting be rated "Score -1, Insightful".
"I understand this concern on behalf of the taxpayers. People want value for money. That's why we always insist on the principal of Information Retrieval charges. It's absolutely right and fair that those found guilty should pay for their periods of detention and the Information Retrieval procedures used in their interrogations."
Only charge those who are being wiretapped. That way they can see the charge in their bill, know they're being tapped, and stop using that phone line to conduct their illegal activies. This ultimately reduces the cost of wire tapping to zero. ;-)
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Well if were getting charged for it, we might as well use it eh?: "Plot, bomb, president, plane, nuclear, chemical, hi-jack, kill, big-mac.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
As several others have pointed out, all wiretapping, email snooping and other communications intercepting are inherently invasions of privacy, but are sometimes needed. If the police agency asking for it has to pay the costs out of their regular operating budget, then they have to ask themselves if the benefits are worth the cost. Having a fund like this means it's effectively free for them, making "fishing expeditions" more attractive, and invites abuse. Yes, I know they still have to persuade a judge to sign the warrant, but I'd still rather have the police reluctant to use them without good reason.
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In Europe, it's common knowledge that the telcos pay the costs of the wiretapping infrastructure (upfront, I don't believe they're swallowing it).
;-)
This is very nice for the authorities, as they could have a system built to their spec but not pay a single cent for it.
What is interesting is that some time ago, a large German telco made a mistake and billed several customers for the wiretapping (their detailed phonebill showed lots of connections to a number where the calls were presumably forwarded to).
Obviously, the authorities were not amused at all.
It has not happened again since
Rainer
Windows 2000 - from the guys who brought us edlin
Sheesh, people! It should be so clear - if a person is causing a problem, you send them the bill. Just charge the suspect. Make sure to get the money before you do it. You could tell them it was for... I don't know, a nation-wide iPod purchasing campaign.
I'm sorry it's called a police budget. I'm a Canadian and I'm sick of the cops trying to weasel more and more money out of us taxpayers. They squander their budgets on police brutality and corruption cases, so it's not my fault they have fallen a tad short these days. And I'm not paying for it. This kind of cash grab always happens when the Liberals are in. It's worse when the Tories get in... they just hand the cops more money without asking. The Liberals always want to ask us for more money.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
It's wrong for "successful" people to pretend that they are that way only on their own merits and efforts. Everyone benefits from a stable society. Those with more, benefit more -- and probably disproportionately. Since they have more to lose, a stable society is more valuable to them. Therefore they should pay more.
Oh, wait. No one seems to be a believer in "capitalism" when confronted with the idea of taxes as payment for social goods. Suddenly then we don't believe in paying for what we get.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
People are looking at Voice over IP as a solution to all this idiocy, but really, not because of its technological advantages at all. They're looking at it because telephone communication is too mainstream and has been saddled with all these extra charges, surveillance, telemarketing, et cetera, none of which is optional to pay for. If VOIP was mainstream, it would have exactly the same crap tacked onto it.
I don't see why i should have to buy anything but what I want to buy... which is commmunication with family, friends, government, and businesses. Telcom's should not be forced to offer 'services' like this at all, they should only be motivated to offer services that benefit and attract customers.
If the country thinks they should be using wire taps that is totally separate, and the budget certainly does exist.
Since they have more to lose, a stable society is more valuable to them. Therefore they should pay more.
I think that's the most idiotic argument for a "progressive" tax system that I've ever heard.
By your logic, the poor should be paying more for medicare and social security since obviously, they have the most to lose if those go down.
Taxes are not a way to "keep society stable". Taxes are a way for citizens to pay for what the government does for the common good. It's debatable what any persons "fair share" in this is but pretending that it is somehow proportional to what they have to lose is preposterous.
Mmmm.. Donuts
I actually think this whole thing is doublespeak.
...
... it's a charge that is wholly the result of national security concerns. As such, it belongs (a) being regulated by external oversight (not just giving Grue a blank check for some amount that results from charging each customer what seems to be not an overly burdensome amount); and (b) coming from the public in the form of a tax.
...).
/.'er has said, the public will cover the costs, it's just a question of who has to stick them with the bill. So this story is about all of these people playing musical chairs to avoid getting stuck with delivering the check. Not even covering it. And it's a totally appropriate expenditure in my mind.
The company -- Bell Canada -- is doing a nice job of saying that it's concerned for the customer. Doesn't want to increase costs covered by the customer,
But what they mean is that (a) they don't want the customer to see this charge as part of their Bell Canada (TM) phone bill; AND (b) they don't want to cover the costs for processing that charge...
But mostly Bell Canada doesn't want to be seen as the SOURCE of this cost. Which is completely understandable AND completely fair. This is not a charge related to upgrading their network or switches or
Grue doesn't want to have to justify the costs to the public and so that's why he wants to just pass it onto them under the auspices of the phone company, always an easy villian (behemoth,
As every
At least the phone company says it's willing to split the costs: half coming from LE, half from the phoneco itself; whereas LE just wants to charge everyone a quarter b/c, as Grue says, that seems about right (next breath he says that he hadn't done the analysis on those numbers yet--whatever).
Agreed, but the side-effect of this is becoming a plutocracy, which the USA now is (and has been for quite some time).
Nonsense. Political power and the government is NOT in the hands of "the wealthy classes". Political power is squarely in the hands of ALL the people. Some people might be too stupid to exercise their political power but to pretend that it is in the hands of the wealthy in a democracy is a travesty of the truth.
Mmmm.. Donuts
If VOIP was mainstream, it would have exactly the same crap tacked onto it.
/dev/dsp|nc localhost 7000"
Really?
Allow me to post something that I wrote last time Slashdot ran a "tapping VoIP" article:
Whoever thinks that they are going to wiretap all VoIP networks at the FBI is living in dreamland. Let's take a brief look at a quick VoIP system that I'm going to design. I'll even publish the source code, right here on Slashdot. It will take me a few seconds to write:
#!/bin/bash
# smallvoip.sh
# VoIP software capable of bypassing FBI wiretap regulations.
# Warning: use or posession of this software may be a federal crime in the United States of America. Download this software at your own risk.
# Copyright 2004, 0x0d0a, released under the GPL
# Usage: smallvoip remote-username remote-ip-address
# You must have a shell account on the remote machine.
# Run on each of the two machines involved in the call.
# Duplex audio support required.
# TODO: pass through lame or oggenc for better bandwidth usage. This will make the second line slightly longer.
# LIMITATIONS: only one user per host at once
# I recommend setting up public-key ssh authentication with this software.
nc -l -p 7001 >/dev/dsp &
ssh -R 7000:`hostname`:7001 $1@$2 "cat
Hmm. My high-security, encrypted Internet phone doing VoIP.
Now, I have to ask the people in charge of Homeland Security: do you really, truly, honestly think that you have *any* hope of keeping anyone from writing such a two-line program? Any *IX user with a bit of experience could write this piece of software and distribute it to the world. In addition, the fact that it contains voice data is essentially undetectable to the outside world, so there is no practical way to "catch" someone using such a system.
It is true that this is a very simple program, but it can also be very easily extended into a full-blown encrypted voice communication program, without the minor limitations here that make this annoying for day-to-day use. In addition, there are a vast number of extant Internet systems for communicating that cannot be wiretapped by the FBI -- PGP/GPG contains no back doors to allow wiretapping of email communications. Frost (on the Freenet platform) can disguise the very fact that an association exists between two users. These systems are rarely used, but they are also not hard to deploy, and if the FBI insists on forcing conventional voice communication to be breakable, there is little incentive not to use systems such as the one that I have demonstrated here.
May we never see th
Your powerful message shook the cynicism from my eyes. (cue patriotic music...)
No longer will I assume that lobbiests funnel money to our representatives to buy influence. I now realize that they simply want to be friendly.
No longer shall I think negative thoughts when Dick C. invites energy companies into private meetings to write energy bills. They were probably just playing Risk or Dungeons & Dragons.
No longer will I assume that George was skipping National Guard duty in Texas rather than slogging through the jungles of Vietnam because of his family connections. It was probably just the luck of the draw.
I will recognize that the DMCA was for the benefit of all citizens of our great country and not a cynical manuever to extend Mickey Mouse's value. I feel better knowing that my copyrights are now protected for decades after I die.
I will rejoice that the grassroots efforts of the voters of California managed to unseat a lawfully elected govenor without the influence of outside money. Jeb next, anyone?
From now on the great words of the commie freak Arlo will echo in my ears: "This Land is YOUR Land; This Land if MY Land!" Assuming, of course, that this is considered "fair use" under the current law.
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
That's the way it is now. The cops are getting billed by the phone company for the wire taps and records searches and are supposed to pay for it out of their operating budgets. The money for wire taps, informants, etc are supposed to be budgetted out of the public funds that they receive for their annual budgets. Where things are getting complicated and where the controversy lies is that some police forces are refusing to pay the bills when they arrive and instead using the money for other things (unspecified).
They're effectively breaking the law, but the phone company can't do anything about it. It's not like they can just cut the police off for not paying the phone bill.
From my point of view, I've already paid for this stuff in my taxes and they've got parts of their budget already allocated for it. I do not wish to pay for this twice.
It seems to me that by the police being allowed to have a special "wiretap surcharge" put on the bill that just makes it easier for them to say "let's tap a whole bunch of folks and hope for the best, since it's free." What crap. At least now they have to put a little thought into the consequences (since it seems more and more a judge's signature isn't required). At least if it comes out of their "budget" they have to convince the government to up their budget. Besides, at least here in the US they are already crying "poverty" and confiscating everything worth anything criminals. Maybe a little better management of their money (rather than their tricked out shiney Ford Explorers, Crown Vics, Harleys, and other high end vehicles) would allow them a few more dollars to violate our supposed rights.
The next thing you know we'll start seeing a "Future Jail Surcharge" explicitly on your taxes -- viewed as an investment in "your possible future incarceration."
Invalid Checksum. Retrying.
If this surcharge is put in place then obviously the price will need to be adjusted occasionally. By exaggerating the need for wiretaps the police chiefs can increase their budgets and their headcount without even raising taxes because the citizen only sees an increase in his phone and internet bills.
Don't think it could happen? More than once, a friend of mine who compiles crime statistics was pressured by his female boss to massage the numbers for domestic violence cases because that is her pet peeve. She couldn't flat out say to change the numbers but it was clear what she wanted, especially after several years of this. He ended up reclassifying certain types of cases that had never been counted under DV before. Presumably she wanted to show an increased need for funding either for her own satisfaction or as a political favor to the director of that program.
I guarantee you that if someone can bump up their headcount or budget by doing more wiretaps then more and more wiretaps will get performed regardless of the true need. Peace. Big Brother loves you.
you may want to look further than simple cash before refusing the senior generation social security. I don't know what it's like in the U.S., but in australia a large amount of the previous generations sacrificed their standard of living so that my standard of living could be better. My parents didn't go to Uni and worked very hard so that it would be my right to be able to be educated. I'm guessing it's the same for a lot of others. Our generation is rich in all senses because of the previous generations sacrifice. It might make us all better people to remember that.
I recently read the following article online in the Globe & Mail web site and am quite concerned.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servle
I believe that funding for wiretapping costs should be provided according to the cost-sharing plan that Bell Canada and others propose. There are a number of reasons why I feel their proposal is attractive:
While I sometimes don't agree with some of your stances, I did vote for you in the last election because I felt that, in spite of the scandals the Liberals have had recently, Liberal policy was better than the alternatives available. I hope you will seriously consider this input from one of your constituents.
Sincerely yours,
Paul-Andre Panon
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
In the end, the consumer will always pay for being tapped. Some way or another....
I would prefer to have the costs explicitly listed on the bill. In that case consumers would see what enormous costs the tapping is causing and how little (compared to the costs) results we're getting.
Canada's police chiefs propose a surcharge of about 25 cents on monthly telephone and Internet bills to cover the cost of tapping into the communications of terrorists and other criminals
Allow me to laugh. We're not talking about 25 cents. Perhaps this are the costs the police needs to do the actual tapping. Currently providing the capability of tapping makes up 15% of your telco bill. Perhaps it is less for large telcos but for the averade city carrier (in germany) this figure is correct.
These costs will drive the concentration process in the telco and ISP business. New regulation in germany require ISPs to have email tapping equipment ready for use which must comply certain standards. Those costs 100.000+ $.
Regards, Martin