Slashdot Mirror
European Crackdown On Skype "Loophole"
angry tapir writes "Suspicious phone conversations on Skype could be targeted for tapping as part of a pan-European crackdown on what law authorities believe is a massive technical loophole in current wiretapping laws, allowing criminals to communicate without fear of being overheard by the police. Eurojust, a European Union agency responsible for coordinating judicial investigations across different jurisdictions, has announced the opening of an investigation involving all 27 countries of the European Union."
Who's 'big brother' here?
The European governments who want to eavesdrop on suspected criminals after obtaining a court order, or the US and UK governments who are presently listening to everybody in Europe, and have been for quite some time, through ECHELON?
Precisely. Intercepting communications is pointless if the target has reason to suspect they are being watched. That's why the US and Britain went to great efforts to disguise the fact that they had broken the German and Japanese encryption systems during WWII.
For instance, when American fighters shot down admiral Yamamoto's plane the US didn't report the fact. They wanted the Japanese to believe that was just a chance encounter, not an action planned from a flight schedule they had known from decrypted Japanese communications.
If criminals knew that much about IT, they would have an IT career, not a criminal one.
Most criminals are at best casual users of computers. While they might hire a whiz kid to encrypt their calls, that is quite rare: hiring someone from outside the criminal environment to encrypt communications opens a much larger security hole than Skype ever could.
You are assuming that the knowledge level common here on Slashdot is common in the real world. It isn't. I remember that Bernardo Provenzano, head of the Sicilian Mafia, used a Caesar cipher using a bible as key to send its orders around, and someone here on Slashdot commenting "what, he does not know of PGP?!?".
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
If criminals knew that much about IT, they would have an IT career, not a criminal one.
Unlikely - that argument might work for petty thieves, but not major criminals, especially terrorists whose motivation is often not money in the first place.
my alternative is a complete ban on ALL wire-tapping.
making all electronic communication the equivalent of whispering in a person's ear.
why would one be considered a fundamental human right and yet the other be so easily discarded?
criminals have the right to air, water, food, shelter, clothing. I'd also add 'right to communicate freely' in that list.
once we start whittling down what rights 'certain' people have, you are on the road to societal doom.
I don't believe 'the end justifies the means' and that's ENTIRELY what this wiretapping is all about. we'll VIOLATE your right to communicate in privacy - because there's some 'bad guy in a turban' that we want to stop.
this is insane! the founding fathers would not have given up our freedom to 'ensure' temporary safety and we shouldn't sell our freedoms out, either!
no, I don't agree that police and the gov have any INHERENT right to tap our comms. nothing at all gives them THAT kind of right-stomping ability, no matter WHAT the cause is.
in all situations, humans should have the DIGNITY to communicate and not have to worry about how is stealing their thoughts, ideas or even worse - who is going to MIS-INTERPRET your writings or speech. I'm waiting for the case where someone's fictional writing is intercepted and someone gets into 'big trouble' when the wiretappers refuse to believe that a person's private writing is just that - private. same with phone, net and anything else including email.
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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."