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VoIP Wiretapping
pisqon writes "VoIP News has an article discussing a U.S. government decision that will extend wiretapping regulations to the Internet. From the article: 'The Federal Communications Commission voted 5-0 last week to prohibit businesses from offering broadband or Internet phone service unless they provide police with backdoors for wiretapping access. Formal regulations are expected by early next year.'" Update: 03/28 04:52 GMT by Z : As several readers have pointed out, this story is a mite out of date. Good conversation in the comments, though.
As long as wireteps for VOIP phones fall under the regulations for wiretaps on normal phones, I don't see any reason that it shouldn't be allowed. Otherwise VIOP will be seen as a haven for criminals trying to circumvent weiretaps instead of a legitimate technology
Don't you hate pants?
Being that VoIP originates from the callers machine digitally, it would be easy to add encryption to the transmission. Please comment, do any current VoIP services clients or other free/open-source clients already offer this feature?
Excuse me, I don't mean to impose, but I am the ocean
Remember the "can't export crypto technology" era?
Those who did their crypto development outside USA
were exempt from the restriction (mostly), ie,
since they wouldn't have to export code in an
electronic form.
Perhaps software-only VoIP systems like Skype
will be exempt from the FCC's "must provide a
backdoor" ruling.
Has Skype made any statement on its position?
The difference between VOIP and regular telephones is that with VOIP its not too difficult to add a layer of encryption transparantly, which would easily foil any wiretapping.
Just encrypt the audio in whatever software you use...
That way, just like PGP or S/MIME encrypted email, they'll be able to see who you called and at what time, but not what you said.
Perhaps now is the time to make sure VoIP offerings can be easily encrypted - before they are taken up by the masses. If high grade opportunistic encryption was available it might jsut be used, whereas to trya nd introduce it retrospectively... well we all know how successful that has been with email.
Does this mean that protocols supporting (or requiring) strong encryption are basically forbidden by that, since there's no way they could be wiretapped?
So,When is FBI going to send out those letters stating that I must appear at XXX address to get my personal ID number TATTOOED on my forearm?
(It won't hurt,just a little pinch...)
As long as the requirements for getting a tap warrent or whatever are just as strict as they are for PSTN, this isnt a problem.
For the techincal side (given that the providers being targeted under this law all have central servers somewhere one would assume), all they need is to plug a big storage device into their network and set things up to dump the audio stream for the phonecalls they are allowed to tap as it passes through the network (either still compressed with whatever compression the phones use or totally uncompressed). Then, provide whatever piece of software is needed to uncompress and listen to the phone calls and thats all the FBI needs.
I vividly remember my dad going into a rage when his mail was being read by the local post office. He went to the mailbox, and I followed him (I was a little kid, it was natural for me to follow.) Had the letter in his hand, shaking it, saying "Look at this! Look at this! These bastards are reading my mail!" The whole top of the letter had been ripped open, and then taped shut.
At the time, he was a semi-high mucky-muck in the Republican Party in California. If the letter came from from party headquarters, some democrat (presumably) opened the letter and read it. After opening and reading it, they'd tape it shut, rubber stamp it with "sorry, damaged in handling", and send it on. Complaints to the local Post Master were ignored (federal government workers, at least at that time, were almost all Democrat, for some strange reason....) For a little more information, see the paragraph under Hobbies list here.
Privacy invasion is more subtle now, but there is zero reason to think things have changed for the better since then.
"The most sensible request of government we make is not, "Do something!" But "Quit it!"
Since obviously we can't use Vonage or equivalent privately.
sulli
RTFJ.
Just because the US as it is is here now doesn't mean it always will be. Rome wasn't the british weren't neither were the greeks or the persians. To think that the us will always be as it is now or be a super power like it is now would be foolish it will have it's own decline just like britten did.
;)
Question is what will the new super power be like and what will it's ideas and moral views be like?
First off, good post - and someone needs to beat the shit out of the person that moderated it offtopic. It is very relevant in a conversation about government police powers.
Now MY post on the other hand, is getting off-topic
With regards to what I quoted: I don't think the U.S. will always be in the position it is today. However, many people think China will be the "next superpower". I disagree with that. I don't think there will be anymore superpowers in the traditional sense.
China gets looked at quite often because of its population. Corporations see them as billions of customers.
The problem is that there are too many of them. All the problems the U.S. has in its population centers will only be magnified in China (or India, for that matter). On top of that, you have a country with relatively few natural resources compared to the U.S.
Furthermore, the U.S. is currently the largest exporter of food in the world. Consider what might happen if one day, in our last gasps as a superpower, we get pissed and stop those exports. Countries like China will have to refocus their efforts on feeding those billions of people.
Unlike previous empires, the U.S. status as a superpower didn't really come through conquest. Yeah yeah we overran the native americans but that wasn't much of a fight was it? So why did we become a superpower? Geographic isolation, natural resources, and a climate favorable for farming. That's it. Really. The one time we were threatened was World War II. But our industrial might and isolation allowed us to tilt the war in favor of the Allies, and to win the nuclear race.
When the world's oil is used up, we'll see what happens. I think the race will be on for fusion energy. Right now, that sort of thing is actively discouraged by Detroit and the U.S. government. People forget what the U.S. can do with R&D when we are sufficiently motivated. Either way, the U.S., once again, already has a head start on alternative energy sources. Its size helps reduce population density, while at the same time providing much needed land and rivers for hydroelectric, nuclear, solar, geothermal, and wind power.
The U.S. economy may sputter and crumble under the weight of its own bureaucracy, corporations, and religious dogma*, but I don't see other nations replacing us as the new superpower anytime soon.
* The religious right in the U.S. is especially to blame for our world policeman attitude. Others in this country would rather take a more isolationist stance and let the rest of the world deal with its own problems.