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VOIP Progress To Be Hobbled By Wiretap Costs?

Posted by Hemos on from the changing-the-base-level-assumptions dept.

vaporland writes "This article @ nytimes.com talks about the reasons that development of commercial VOIP may be stifled by the costs required to allow the federal government to listen in on conversations. It is the intention of the FBI, et al, to provide a truly unfunded mandate to force VOIP service providers to develop and provide this wiretap access to them at no cost to the U.S. government, which is to say, the consumer of VOIP will foot the bill for allowing the government to listen in on our phone calls. Perhaps they should just hire some script kiddies to show them how to do it on the cheap?"

16 of 392 comments (clear)

  1. Better idea.. by t_allardyce · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Perhaps we should just all (i mean everyone) start using encryption everywhere and make the whole thing pointless just so they give up..

    --
    This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
    1. Re:Better idea.. by ifdef · · Score: 5, Interesting

      In that case, it won't be long at all before the use of encryption becomes illegal. Simply using encryption will be a enough to put you behind bars, regardless of what you are encrypting.

      That's how a police state works.

    2. Re:Better idea.. by TheRealMindChild · · Score: 5, Informative

      Not necessarily. If it worked like PGP, the encryption could be done right on the phone. And just like it works today, you could use any phone, not just the phne companys.

      --

      "When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
    3. Re:Better idea.. by gl4ss · · Score: 5, Insightful

      correction, encryption is ESSENTIAL if you can't trust the phone company.

      --
      world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
  2. I would like the option by ifdef · · Score: 5, Funny

    If I don't pay for the wiretapping costs, don't wiretap me.

  3. Who do you think ultimately pays for it anyway? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Users of VOIP are taxpayers. At least this can be considered a use tax. If a citizen never uses VOIP should they pay for your wiretap? Just a thought.

  4. Script Tix are for Kids by slashnutt · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The PGP Phone Project is dead now but it would be great of GPGP would revive it. The script kiddes would have a much tougher time cracking this and this is why the goverment is wanting a little help.

  5. No cost to the U.S. government by kfg · · Score: 5, Funny

    Yeah. Why don't they just use their own money instead of making us pay for it?

    KFG

  6. remember--only applies to commercial apps by bodrell · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Any person who rolls their own VOIP can avoid being wiretapped at all. If I were a criminal who wanted to not be detected, I sure as hell wouldn't do my illicit communications over a regular phone, anyway. Much easier to just encrypt text and send it through insecure email. Even if the email is intercepted, who cares?

    Public/private keys are great and all, but for organized crime it would work just as well to use a symmetric cipher and just share the keys. If the criminals are all working together, it shouldn't matter if they all know the key.

    Anyway, it always rubs me the wrong way when the feds demand to have backdoor access to spy on us. It's bad enough they have the right to tap a phone at all, but now they're trying to make sure that ability is built into the software? No thanks--I'll use an offshore VOIP provider who doesn't have those nasty requirements.

    --
    Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a soportar Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a espabilar
  7. my own service by mrpuffypants · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What prevents me from writing my own VOIP software and using that? Will it need to be wiretap-emabled as well? What if I use SSH or PGP to secure and authenticate the connections?

    Does the government really think that the terrorists are going to sign up for Vonage and not use Skype or their own small app?

  8. VOIP Business Plan? by Skjellifetti · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I've never understood how the VOIP cos. expect to survive long-term. VOIP is just another TCP/IP protocol like ftp or smtp. The only reason a VOIP connection requires a third party provider is because most of the phone network is still POTS and so VOIP cos are essentially brokers between the POTS and the internet. But eventually, most calls will be peer-to-peer across the internet just like most other IP protocols and there will be no need for VOIP cos.

    This makes the whole wiretap thing moot. The VOIP cos. won't survive anyway, so who cares if they die a little earlier because of some silly wiretap requirements?

    --
    FreeSpeech.org
  9. What would the Founding Fathers think? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Does it ever occur to anyone to wonder what the reaction of the founding fathers would have been to all this crap?

    "Hey, how about we

    (1) make sure the government can listen to folks' private conversations, and make 'em pay for the privelige?

    (2) restrict political protest to 'free speech zones' where no-one can hear it?

    (3) have armed government agents at all ports?

    (4) make everyone carry ID documents if they want to travel, and arrange it so we can secretly scan them without the citizen even knowing?

    (5) refuse to let someone travel if their name resembles the name of someone we have declared an enemy?

    (6) etc etc etc"

    Bottom line: do you think the framers would have

    (a) enshrined the government's right to do this crap in the constitution, or

    (b) enshrined the People's right not to suffer this crap in the constitution?

    It baffles me why Americans are not rioting in the streets.

  10. Re:I forgot... by Sanity · · Score: 5, Interesting
    When did it become the duty of a government to spy on its own citizens and force them to pay for the privelege of being spied on?
    Since the constitution went from being a list of things the government can do to a list of the things it can't.
  11. Re:Cost of civilization by e2ka · · Score: 5, Insightful
    I for one, say let's trust the people that we have put in positions of power (for the most part), and let them decide when to use this power.

    Which people? You mean the CIA/FBI? Did you vote to give them this power? Did you vote to elect the people who have access to this power? Did you even vote for the person that hired those people?

    The beuracracy is thick. Who is in control? I certainly don't feel like I am.

  12. Re:Cost of civilization by AKnightCowboy · · Score: 5, Insightful
    However, these means are the primary ways of detecting terrorist chatter. If an attack were to happen on US soil for which the planning occurred over VOIP lines, or email, or normal phone lines, and the CIA couldn't prevent it because they couldn't tap lines, then we would all be up in arms.

    Instead of trying to detect attacks, how about eliminating the reasons the terrorists have for attacking us in the first place? Everybody has a reason for doing something... find out what their reason is and eliminate it. I imagine their reason has nothing to do with being really evil and wanting to eliminate freedom, so don't even throw that one in the ring. Nobody is really evil, just greedy and motivated by their own self-interests.

  13. Doesn't "hobble" progress by CurMo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I was a software engineer on Nortel Network's VoIP "succession" line of products, and I can attest that wiretapping ability is something that was required for us to add.

    The issue is with conversations now being transmitted in packets as opposed to analog signals, its impossible to tap the wire conventionally. The only place you could do that is from where the signal is converted back to POTS (plain old telephone service) to the house. Which, in a perfect VoIP world, isn't going to even be an option as people are using things like cable modems as their VoIP gateways (so its digital all the way from the house).

    However, I don't think this "feature" hobbled our progress. It was just another feature in an extremely long list of features that were necessary. I don't think it took the engineer more than a week to implement, but possibly its more difficult in different architectures? (A key to Nortels architecture was being able to seemlessly integrate with POTS service, so digital->analog conversion was basically a built-in).

    Now, whether I agree with the "feature" or not is a different story, but I won't go into that....