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FCC Affirms VoIP Must Allow Snooping

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the big-brother-is-listening dept.

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."

1 of 301 comments (clear)

  1. How would this work? by jamesh · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.