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 Update: 03/28 04:52 GMT by Z : As several readers have pointed out, this story is a mite out of date.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.

Comments

the net is just a backbone

[pbjones]

if not VOIP then people will write somethingelse to replace it that is secure. VOIP is shit quality voice over a crappy network, I reject VoIP calls and make people use landlines.

Alright... who cares?

[rice_burners_suck]

This is perfectly acceptable. There are a lot of bad people in the world, like terrorists, who might use VoIP instead of talking on the normal telephone because of lack of wiretapping. If VoIP provides the same service as the normal telephone, then it stands to reason that it should fall under the same rules.

Re:Is Skype [dev'd outside of USA] exempt?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

How will you force a company based in Luxembourg to insert backdoors in its software when it has no obligation to do so?

How terribly naive.

How about the CIA threatening his business, or family, or just his reputation - maybe Niklas has a few girls (or guys) he doesn't want his wife to find out about. Even if he is squeeky clean, kiddee porn is so easy to plant - you don't even have to physically get to his computer...

Or, slightly less evil, planting an agent on the development team who will put a hidden back door in the code? Doesn't even have to be a "real" back door, just a subtle bug that can be exploited to open things up.

Maybe just a big fat bribe to Zennstrom to make sure it gets done and then act as if it didn't?

Or, slightly less evil, the bait of a huge, lucrative government contract - as long as the product contains certain extra crispy features. That was the plan for the Clipper chip and it wasn't even a secret.