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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."

4 of 301 comments (clear)

  1. Encryption? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If they are this forceful in there attempts to spy on citizens, than how long do you think we can use encryption before they ban it (or at least mandate a government backdoor)?

  2. User encryption raises even more flags by BadassJesus · · Score: 5, Interesting

    it makes encryption for VoIP even more urgent

    Big players like Skype or Google Talk will have to implement weak (gov breakable) cypher. And if you opt to use it you will automatically be in focus.

  3. Action Time! by autocracy · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I've read so many things about our government as a whole's actions this year, and I'm really distraught. I walked into my Senator's office today, and discussed meeting with her. Usually, she only takes groups. I assume the same applies for most other Senators and Reps. Letters get ignored, e-mails are only seen by staff... who knows what happens to faxes?

    My answer? A call to the /. community to organize in each Congressional district. Anybody who wants to assist in putting together these groups, please e-mail me. techroots@storyinmemo.com. If 15 of us in Southern Maine get together, we'll get a meeting. If we, as an organization, speak, we'll be much louder. Anybody, and particularly anybody in Southern Maine, I really want to hear from you. In a world that organizes online, if we can speak in real life too, we as geeks may be the most efficient people to form together.

    Let's see if we can't stand a chance in hell of not being oppressed by the government we as a country vote for.

    --
    SIG: HUP
  4. Use IP to IP Dialing To Bypass VOIP Backdoors by Junior+Samples · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I regularly use VOIP via Free World Dialup (FWD). This system uses the SIP protocol. FWD servers seem to have frequent outages. To get around this problem, I've found that I can use direct IP to IP dialing and bypass FWD's servers completely. IP dialing is cumbersome, but you can put the dialed addresses in a speed call list and use 2-digit dialing. This works very well. There's a side benefit of no call logging since the provider's server is being bypassed. In theory I can call any SIP phone that's connected to the internet whether they're on Vonage, Packet Eight, or any other network, if I know their IP address.

    Right now there are about a half dozen members of our private network. We're all registered with dyndns.org to solve the problem of dynamic addressing. We're all using Sipura Network adapters to connect a regular telephone to the Internet. The Sipura adapters accommodate dialing by hostname or IP address. The latency is lower with direct IP dialing because the voice packets are not routed through FWD's STUN or NAT servers.

    This method is more secure since you're not dependent on any VOIP provider. The back doors that they provide for government spying can be bypassed. Encryption would be difficult but not impossible because it would have to be implemented in the Sipura firmware. SIP software phones will also work with direct IP dialing.