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."

Comments

What rights on-line?

[denissmith]

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'?