Slashdot Mirror
US Fears Loss of ICQ Honeypot
AHuxley writes "US law enforcement bodies view the sale of instant messaging service ICQ to a Russian company as a threat to homeland security. In spring 2010, Russia's largest Internet investment company, Digital Sky Technologies, agreed to purchase the service for $187 million from AOL. The US is sure that most criminals use ICQ and, therefore, constant access to the ICQ servers is needed to track them down. As the system is based in Israel, American security service have had access. The article concludes, 'Lawyers [of unspecified nationality] say that to block the deal the US Committee on Foreign Investment needed to cancel it no later than within 30 days after the deal has been announced — so unless the rules are broken, nothing can be changed.'"
Nothing can be done?! Nonsense. The National Security Act could be used to simply seize the entire operation, if it's that important.
A peer-to-peer architecture would be better for IM - no single point of failure at a server that impacts all conversations, end-to-end security rather than client to server, server to client, and no man in the middle attacks by government agencies or anybody else who chooses to record the conversations going through the servers. I sometimes wonder whether all the public IM servers are run by the "Air America" airline. The only use of a server in IM should be as a directory and participant availability service, not to carry the conversations, unless both participants are behind NAT. If one of the participants have a public IP address the conversations could go direct between the end-points. SIMPLE
The Internet's nature is peer to peer - 20050301_cs_profs.pdf
I dunno what's more shocking, that the government thinks ICQ has any relevance with anything anymore or that someone thought the network was worth $186 MILLION dollars. That's just insane.
Seriously, where did they get this claim:
"The US said it is sure that most criminals use ICQ"
Who actually said that? The article claims "US law enforcement bodies", but doesn't say which ones. It doesn't even say if they are federal, state, local, or private law enforcement bodies.
"Most" criminals is probably too broad. Maybe they meant terrorists. Maybe they meant spies. Who knows? But I doubt that every drug dealer and pimp out there is using ICQ.
And why would criminals all congregate to the same service? There are lots of great ways to disseminate information (text messages, email, phone calls, etc). Why would criminals use only one particular version (ICQ) of a particular method (IM)?
Let me get this right, the US authorities are worried about the ICQ* service going to the Russians.... has the US seen just how much their economic rivals China own of the US economy? Get your priorities in order.
* Does anyone actually use ICQ any more?
Take Nobody's Word For It.