Slashdot Mirror
Wikileaks Publishes FBI VoIP Surveillance Docs
An anonymous reader writes "The folks on wikileaks have published a new interesting and shocking report: FBI Electronic Surveillance Needs for Carrier-Grade Voice over Packet (CGVoP) Service.
The 88 paged document, which is part of the CALEA Implementation Plan was published in January 2003 and describes in detail all needs for surveillance of phone calls made via data services like the internet.
Wikileaks has not published any analysis yet, so maybe some of the techies hanging around this end of the internet are interested in taking that one on."
Time to take Thomas Jefferson's advice?
Most of the stuff on
We desperately need a personal Internet telephony program that has full support for encryption. PGPfone was left unmaintained a decade ago, and Ekiga won't have encryption support until version 3.0. It's like there's a conspiracy to leave the public without such a basic tool.
Anarchy exists nowhere but in the individual mind.
In any society of human individuals greater than one, there will always evolve some system of governance.
It is not a question of whether you will lose any freedom, but of how much you will lose.
It is at least a talking point of the Democrats. But one which I wouldn't trust Hillary to follow. And there is no question that McCain couldn't give a rat's ass about your privacy as to the FBI.
So yes, Obama is a better pick on individual rights than either of the alternatives.
Whether it will be a huge difference, or whether he will remain true to this, noone can be sure. As in life, there are no guarantees in politics.
I'm trying to figure out why the summary calls this document "shocking." Interesting yes, shocking no. It is well known that the law requires VOIP providers to maintain a capability for law enforcement agencies to wiretap. This requirement has been around for years, and is completely consistent with older "Plain Old Telephone Service." Its not like CALEA is hidden. You can find its website with a quick google. The author of the summary seems to be conflating CALEA with the dustup with the Bush administration and unlawful wiretaps. They are separate issues. Conflating them helps no one.
This was leaked at least 4 years ago.
It is said that Anarchy is the absence of rulers, not the absence of rule.
Take the free software movement as an example... the movement isn't ruled by anyone, the society of human individuals (programmers) can license their work any way they like, but they _choose_ to push for freedom on to others.
Those who are free to choose are not ruled.
Recording police interrogations is a manifestly good thing. It ensures, among other things, that the police can't simply beat you until you confess.
Surveillance of public servants and surveillance of the general populace aren't even remotely similar.
You mean "Don't talk about what you have done or what you are going to do (at least over an unsecured medium)"? ;)
It's frightening that you think leaking information "about legal and non-controversial wire taps" is "borderline treason". If this really is as boring as you think, then why would millions need to be spent to undo any damage, why would the US gov start legal action, and why would there need to be an internal investigation?
Yawn. This is the FBI's implementation plan, not some super-secret details of the specs. This is derived from J-STD-025A, J-STD-025B, and EWA 3.0 AMTA docs. Feel free to Google for those. The first and last you should be able to find. The "B" one they want money for, so it is harder to find freely online.
Those detail exactly WHAT and HOW monitoring is going to occur, on a technical level.
And don't get your knickers in a twist about the FBI document. I've already seen one instance where the FBI told a carrier "we want it done this way" and the carrier's lawyers said "no, that isn't legal and we won't do it". Of course, it was probably a result of the software not being implemented in that manner and it would have cost the carrier mucho $$ to do it the FBI's way...
Nothing like a few $$ to prompt the legal dept. to see it your way.
http://www.google.com/search?q=j-std-025&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
The words "warrant" and "judge" do not appear in this document.
Obama has done nothing to show that he would be any different then the others but you are willing to cut him a pass because you don't know.
Senator Obama's qualifications Include a J.D. in constitutional law from Harvard, He was a lecturer of constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School, and he worked as a community organizer and later as a lawyer representing community organizers on voting rights and discrimination issues.
So yeah I think that there is some evidence that he might have a better understanding of and respect for the constitution of the United States of America.
this can be confirmed with a simple wikipedia search or set of google searches (or by reading his first book, Dreams from My Father).
Just because something is not yet proven does not mean that no evidence exists.
When used properly with *warrants*, wiretapping is an important law enforcement tool. Don't go confusing bad behavior by the Government with necessary law enforcement tools.
;)
The capability is needed, but so is proper oversight and protection of Consitutional rights. Then again all you wanted was to squeeze in your Obama ad
If you think Ackbar Hussein Osama is going to be any bigger on individual rights than Grandpa and the Bitch, then you are sadly mistaken.
It's interesting that you should refer to "Barack" as "Ackbar." Admiral Ackbar was an accomplished leader of the Rebel Alliance, which was the "good" side in the Star Wars universe. He spent much of his career fighting the (evil) Galactic Empire.
It's telling that you should be using the name in a derogatory way.
In any case, I'm not the biggest expert in Star Wars, unlike some here, but evidently at some point Ackbar was wrongly accused of treason by a politically-motivated opponent. We'll have to watch Fox News over the next several months to find out how much life imitates art.
There's not much new here. If you're familiar with CALEA, the law that hooked the Government into the phone system big-time, this is basically the same set of requirements the FBI wanted for voice calls. There was a big disagreement in the voice world over in-band signalling. The question was whether a "pen register" warrant authorized access to signalling data that goes over the voice channel, like Touch-Tone tones sent to some non-carrier device. The FBI was bitching about that for years.
The trouble with all this stuff is that Congress didn't mandate proper auditing. Every surveillance event in CALEA ought to be logged by the Judicial Branch, at the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. We don't have that.