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Big Brother Wants Into VoIP At Any Cost
wallaby fly-half writes "An amendment to the CALEA law would make it easier for the government to monitor calls made over VoIP and even temporarily store some packet traffic. Ars Technica reports that the 'bill will put the technology in place to buffer packet streams, and places the job of filtering those streams under government control. We know from the NSA warrantless wiretapping program that the government is not limiting itself to access to under court orders, and the CALEA bill must be considered in light of the capacity it generates.'"
Raise your hand if you thought VoIP was a really neat idea when it first came out.
Now raise your hand if you still think it is.
Granted it's not really too different from recording Voice, but now you could expect yourself to be extraordinarily rendered if you choose to encrypt your converstations because you have the gall to actually believe the government has no right to recording and storing your conversations, Dub's dirty tricks or not.
Hell, they'll probably outlaw encrypting your own phone calls, next, because (the flag waving) it's (an eagle poses rampant) in (strains of The Star Bangled Banner) the (In God We Trust) best(the blue angels fly overhead) interests (cascading images of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, etc.) of (Betsy Ross adds another star to her handicraft) America (fanfare of fife and drum) and everybody knows the real patriots don't question any of this.
"sir, you served potential enemies of uh-merika with strong encryption" and we can't be having that.
Ebay constantly in hot water would probably love to score some points with Washington, they're probably already serving tea and crumpets with the NSA right now, along with a side order of Skype backdoors.
dangerous times call for dangerous laws
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
From the FCC Mandate: From Phil's site: The stupid part of this is that we shouldn't have to do this
You are innocent. You have done nothing to give the government the right to investigate you or collect your phone records with the intent to prosecute you. If you're an American, take a few hours to protect what so many people have fought and died for: your rights to privacy and being innocent until proven guilty.
What next? Is the King of England going to be able to listen in on my VoIP calls?
My work here is dung.
The biggest downside is that in just two short years, George Bush will no longer be president and we won't get to hear such cerebral commentaries any longer.
Right. In two short years, Hillary will be taking her turn with all of the expanded executive powers that Dubya is indulging in. Then it'll be your turn to stammer, "Uh, hey, wait a minute, guys, this executive-dictatorship thing isn't so cool."
The worm will turn. It always does.
Remember Clipper chip? Yeah ole Sammy wanted in then too but they changed their tactics by using patent law when that initiative failed.
/. geeks, create a solution.
For those who don't know, the DES patent is owned by N.S.A. so when you see that Verizon's latest gadget that is triple DES encrypted don't be impressed, Uncle Sammy can get right in.
Seems like what we need at this point is OSS encryption that can't be so easily cracked by N.S.A. It's just a matter of time before Skype/Vonage, etc are required to change their encryption to DES or something that the government can read.
It used to be that the government had better technology always, not so true anymore. So
Big brother is already into my credit card records, phone call records, credit and purchase history and library records. Why would anyone think VOIP would get a break?
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Pretty much everybody without his/her head up his/her ass knows that "fighting terrorism" has very little to do with this.
But then, spying on and harrassing political opponents a la Nixon may not be the main motivation behind it, either.
The BIG concern within the Bush Administration is the threat from people inside of it. They need their own people to know that if they divulge any embarrassing or incriminating information, even anonymously, that they will be tracked down and punished. The war is against potential whistleblowers.
Ever wonder why you never hear interviews with anybody who knew Dubya back in his wild days before he became governor of Texas? Every college friend of every other president had stories to tell, some positive and some not, but not so with George II. Why is this? Well, pretty much everybody with an embarrassing story to tell about cocaine or girls or his desertion from the National Guard now has a cushy high-level job in the government or the energy industry. Better jobs with more power than they'd ever dreamed they'd have, and jobs they're not going to jeopardize by telling stories.
That's how you go from being a horse show official to being head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency with zero experience. Anybody who works in Washington knows there's hundreds - maybe thousands - of 'em.
Without the extensive eavesdropping powers Bush claims, these people would be free to contact reporters or blog information anonymously. By advertising these "powers" via carefully planned "leaks", Karl Rove is letting insiders know that they're taking a big risk if they spill any beans.
And you can bet they'll know who I am as soon as I hit the "Submit" button...