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FCC Affirms VoIP Must Allow Snooping
MarsGov writes "The FCC released an order yesterday that requires all broadband providers and all "interconnected" VoIP providers to implement CALEA — in other words, law enforcement can snoop on your online conversations, both voice and text. While this is no surprise, it makes encryption for VoIP even more urgent."
...is "connected". For the people whom I talk to the most -- family and some cyber-aware friends -- strong encryption on top of VoIP is the way I will go. Don't leave the Internet for the traditional POTS world and the CALEA doesn't apply.
http://www.philzimmermann.com/EN/zfone/index.html
Thank you (again), Phil.
-Charles
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Properly implemented, SIP (common VoIP protocol) works like this:
A='A Party' - the person making the call
B='B Party' - the person receiving the call
P='Proxy' - the VoIP provider
A and B register with P.
A makes a call to B:
. A requests P that it be put through to B
. P contacts B, B's phone rings
. B answers
. P lets A know B's details
. P lets B know A's details
. A and B exchange voice traffic directly, without involving P
This allows latency to remain low when, say, A and B are in Australia and P is on the other side of the world.
To perform a successful wire tap in this scenario, the FCC would need to intercept the data at multiple points, possibly in separate countries.
Alternatively, P can tell A and B that there is too much firewalling in place and that all voice traffic must go via P, but by doing this they are giving the game away... it would be easily detectable by A and or B if they were smart enough to know what was going on.
How to avoid this Traffic analysis: Usenet
Post a picture on a newsgroup and put an encrypted message inside of it.
Usenet will distribute it for you. Not possible to see who actually has the correct key and tool to decrypt it.
Post it at one provider and Usenet protocol will see that it arrives with many other providers over all countries.
The sole reason for the picture is so that many people will download it from as many places possible, making a direct link not workable.
See it as the message send out during WWII. Jean has a grand moustache. I repeat. Jean has a grande moustache.
They know something is going out, but they have no idea for whom it is ment or what it means. It even could be just some pictures.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.