Slashdot Mirror
FCC Giving Veto Power to FBI Over VoIP?
An anonymous reader writes "In this article, the FCC reveals that if you're using VoIP products at your own behest then you may have personal legal requirements to provide the FBI with access to information they might want to intercept. Or to put it another way, using encryption with VoIP can prevent the FBI from implementing wire taps."
If its *with* a warrant, nothing new here..
If its *without* then we have a privacy/rights problem that needs to be taken to the supreme court.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I wonder how long the rule will survive the courts, since you could probably argue that a built in backdoor to communications was a violation of the fourth amendment. It is a blanket warrantless search on everyone, whether they execute an actual search or not. Yet courts have allowed roadblocks to test for drunk driving ( which is the conceptually the same ) and they allow random bag searches it the Port Authority and the airports. All of these are really fourth amendment violations. Some day a court will probably swing the other way and forbid them ( would that make them liberal or conservative ? Bonus points for the correct answer! ), but for now the paranoids rule. I suppose the key question is what will they do to police the situation, If A sends B an encrypted packet, and A and B are using a well known port ( 22, say) and the packet crosses D's network, is D responsible for insuring that the packet is compliant? How is D to know? As long as A and B have access to an encryption software that has no backdoor I don't see how it matters whether Skype has a backdoor or not. Or is this a case where, as recently was reported, even owning encryption software of this type will be 'evidence of intent'?
I have nothing to hide. So, why are you spying on me?
I think that many of the laws that are put in place because of this are really overreaching, but on the other hand, if you were doing something illegal and found out that, starting the next day your phone was going to be tapped, you were going to be followed, and your every move was going to be scrutinized because law enforcement *thought* that you were doing someting illegal, you would most likely, overnight, come up with a game plan to make it look like you were just an ordinary law abiding citizen.
Sure there are people who abuse their power, and that is where the problem lies - it isn't necessarily with the law itself, its with the people who enforce the law thats the problem.
We in the US battle over whether its constitutional to have "under god" in the pledge of allegiance and whether "free speach" really means free speach.
Another analogy - corporations will (well, okay, they should) put a lot of time and effort into network security because it only takes one person on the inside, who has inside knowledge, to steal company data (whether it be customer data such as SSNs and credit card info or other confidential data). If everyone were trustworthy, there would be no need for network monitoring for threats. Likewise, if everyone were trustworthy and always obeyed the law and never did anything illegal, we wouldn't have all of these laws that dictate basically that we have no privacy anymore.
The problem is, how do you know before something bad happens who the bad people are?
There are a few things not covered in this ruling. The main one is end-to-end VOIP w/encryption. For example, how about VOIP via something like H.323 over an IPSec tunnel (point to point). So to say we have no right to privacy is misguided.
The idea seems to be that the courts should be able to authorize wiretapping of any media regardless of whether it is a traditional phone system or a VOIP connection over a public network.
Or how about someone using VOIP on a corporate intranet via a VPN? I would assume that these are explitly not covered? Especially if we are talking IPSec/GRE tunnels with traffic running through them. All law enforcement would know by tapping your broadband provider is that you are logged into the corporate VPN and that there is traffic going back and forth. You would not even know where the call was going or even that it was a call.
The second question is far more tricky.... Imagine that someone sets up some VOIP termination servers in a non-extradition country like Belize. These require IPSec/GRE tunnels and have a client that will set things up for you. The goal is to have a free worldwide and secure system. It seems to me that this would be well beyond the FCC's juristiction. But this might well be the way that things develop.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
> What is it going to take to get people to be so pissed off
Paying attention and recognizing bullshit/corruption. And they need to quit thinking the enemy is "the other party," instead of the people in their own party that are taking advantage of them.
"The exercise by citizens ... of their freedoms and rights may not infringe upon the interests of the state"
"consumers are entitled to run applications and use services of their choice, subject to the needs of law enforcement"
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine