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FBI: We Need Wiretap-Ready Web Sites — Now
TheGift73 writes with news that the FBI is pushing a proposal to update old wiretap legislation so that modern web firms would be forced to build in backdoors to facilitate government surveillance. Quoting CNET:
"In meetings with industry representatives, the White House, and U.S. senators, senior FBI officials argue the dramatic shift in communication from the telephone system to the Internet has made it far more difficult for agents to wiretap Americans suspected of illegal activities, CNET has learned. The FBI general counsel's office has drafted a proposed law that the bureau claims is the best solution: requiring that social-networking Web sites and providers of VoIP, instant messaging, and Web e-mail alter their code to ensure their products are wiretap-friendly. ... The FBI's proposal would amend a 1994 law, called the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, or CALEA, that currently applies only to telecommunications providers, not Web companies. The Federal Communications Commission extended CALEA in 2004 to apply to broadband networks."
Time to move my mail/chat server out of the US.
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
Because we don't have enough problems with crackers already!
They get your IP from Skype then head on over to Comcast (1 in 5 chance your on them in the U.S.) who freely gives them access to whatever they need.
Since Skype is not only P2P but also encrypted via 256-bit AES, I have a hard time seeing how you could be wrong...
Security has gotten so good these days that all the holes in security we used to defend against are now be mandated by government to be put back in! In all the genius lets put all our data at risk again. Provide a backdoor for one party on the Internet and you provide a backdoor for everybody. We need more attack vectors!
I get wanting to be able to monitor data, there is zero reason this should be easy however.
Right but it seems as though they have no way to access the actual content of the call, unless I misunderstand how Skype works.
What could possibly go wrong...?
I don't care if websites are "wiretap-ready." Phones already are.
What I care about is if data can be collected (not used; COLLECTED) from these sites wiretap-ready sites without a warrant.
And this, of course, is all "to protect our democratic way of life".
Coming up soon: Government-mandated Java and PHP methods that your website code will have to call.
If Syria or China were doing this, it would be called tyranny or dictatorship.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
Thanks for weakening our infrastructure, FBI! Also, after seeing how widely abused CALEA is, it's the last thing I want to see pushed on the American public.
I went to eat some animal crackers and the box said, "Do not eat if seal is broken." I opened the box and sure enough..
So the FBI is now mimicking the *AA's: Their job is harder with the Internet, so they make laws to stop the Internet from ruining their old ways of doing things.
The Wired Elemental Routine Executable Federal Unlawful Collection Kernel Encryption Datagram
If it's to fight terrorism then I'm all for it but if it's to fight "drugs" and "crime" then I'm totally against it.
I'm only for it if it's FOR THE CHILDREN!
If this goes through, does this mean that providers such as Comcast, Verizon, et al, who both provide the physical means of communications and who also offer the services described in the article, will now be treated as telecommunication companies, subject to all the rules and regulations therein?
If so, does that mean we can finally get competition for broadband without those companies wanting to charge exorbitant rates to competitors for line usage?
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
What makes you think there isn't already a back door in Skype? It's not like we can check out the code and verify that it's clean.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
There's nothing in the Constitution that says we have to make invading our privacy easier on them. Already we are facing all our car's movements being trackable and now they want to make sure every form of communication is easily accessible. At what point does unreasonable search and seizure kick in? This almost ties into the TSA story. The Supreme Court needs to define "Unreasonable search and seizure" since the government seems to think ALL search and seizure is reasonable. Need I bring up drug forfeiture? You can take a tourist on a day fishing trip and if he has a brick of cocaine with him they seize your boat and the government feels that's reasonable even when you had no way to know without illegally searching your customer.
In meetings with industry representatives, the White House, and U.S. senators, senior FBI officials argue the dramatic shift in communication from the telephone system to the Internet has made it far more difficult for agents to wiretap Americans suspected of illegal activities, CNET has learned.
Do not accept any bill which contains overly broad or vague language. Be watchful of FBI objectives which claim to focus on "illegal activities" and "crime". Also be careful of emotional keywords like "kiddie porn" and "pedophiles".
When it comes to fighting terrorism I'm for the FBI. When it comes to fighting pedophiles I'm for the FBI. When it comes to fighting "illegal activities" and "crime" I'm not for the FBI because that isn't specific enough to give them broad powers. Since everyone is a criminal, if we empower them to fight "illegal activities" we are giving them the power to abuse entire communities in the name of combating "illegal activities" and "crime". The purpose of the FBI should be to protect communities, and we universally agree that terrorists and pedophiles are the bad guys regardless of our political stance on other issues.
We need bills which remove the political issues such as piracy, "illegal activities" and crime and focus more on terrorism and violence. If someone is a serial killer the FBI should be able to do a wiretap, but don't want to see the day when the FBI sees everything we do online and starts arresting people on piracy and other trivial offenses. Yes some people are going to say these offenses are economic crimes, but these offenses aren't good enough to put backdoors in every website.
Has Skype found a way to deal with issues like this yet?
http://phys.org/news/2011-05-encrypted-voip.html
Dearest agents of the FBI,
It should please you to know that all of my websites are already amenable to wiretapping, and my networks are all designed to allow you to insert your sniffer wherever you want. Please do note, however, that most of my internal support services communicate via the pDonkey protocol, where all data is encoded as a series of pictures of donkeys copulating.
It will be left to you to decode messages transmitted in this manner, as the protocol is intended to send a clear message to any eavesdro[ppers on our secure systems. The message is "Fuck you, jackass".
Sincerely,
Sarten X
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
If the FBI was actually able to hire the best and the brightest, then there would be no no need for a "wiretap-friendly" software. Social networking sites are the easiest. VoIP, IM, and E-mail is just a matter of Wireshark and the proper filters applied.
Maybe they need to put up some job advertisements on /.
They want to save money. It's not a matter of them being able to hire the best and brightest, they want to do it for free.
But if someone is trying to talk you into bombing innocent people and you don't have a conscience about that or any reservations about loss of life then you're still a threat to society
I thought we were talking about the FBI, not republicans.
In all seriousness though, if you are trying to talk an innocent person into bombing people and you don't have a conscience about that, then you're a threat to society.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
This is legislation to make it legal, and they're talking about legislation to make it *required*... this has nothing to do with needing technical prowess. Right now, Facebook is able to tell them to shove it (not that they would) and they have to deal with it. This will not only preclude them from having to have the proper technical staff, but it will also allow them to not have to worry about breaking each new technology as it emerges.
In law, there's two words that should scare you when it comes to something of this nature. 'Notwithstanding,' because it literally means everything you thought you knew has changed and 'vague,' as in this law is so vague a 5 year old with a Phoenix Wright obsession could convince a grand jury that everything from a can and two strings to telepathy could fall under "communication medium."
The FBI is thinking long term - they could (continue to) cut backroom deals with providers and wade through red tape along the way, or they could get this to happen. It's a power game, and they're playing for keeps. I don't believe that they're an evil organization, far from it - they have the best intentions... but certain roads are lined with those kinds of things.
I'm only for it if it's for me. I'd like to have a backdoor built into all of the FBIs communication so that I can make sure that they're on the level for everyone else.
We wanted our VOIP services to be free of CALEA backdoors, so we based ourselves in Luxembourg, where they do not have such regulations, and are not likely to have them anytime soon.
This could be a big win for open source. Are you concerned about your privacy? Then you'd better not be running proprietary mail or web software because the government backdoors are pre-installed (actually, they're probably there already today, but now you'll know for sure). Only if you're running open source will you be able to inspect the code yourself, verify that there are no government backdoors, or remove them if they are present. I'm sure the clever among us will even go as far as to send the FBI to a honeypot while directing private communications to the real servers.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
"They want to save money. It's not a matter of them being able to hire the best and brightest, they want to do it for free."
No, they don't even want to do it for free. They want to do it AT YOUR EXPENSE.
I'm not afraid of terrorists. The chances of me being hurt by a terrorist are infinitesimal compared to any other cause of death. The right thing to do is ignore them.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Even if they did make the wording very narrow all it takes is a law later down the line that redefines drug trafficking as terrorism. I can see it being debated already:
Insane Politician: "We need to use our SpyFest 3000 to crack down on drugs. Let's pass this law that extends it to cover drug traffickers."
Reasonable Politician: "Uhm, no. SpyFest 3000 was an overreach when there was real, immediate, huge potential harm out there. Drug traffickers are better stopped by actual human intelligence instead of backdoor spying on everyone."
IP: "Ah, I see. You're soft on drugs and terrorism because you're opposing the STOP Terrorism On Planes bill."
RP: "What the fuck? I don't see how your bill, which gives the police free access to phone tap any citizen living within 100 miles of the US border, has anything to do with planes!"
IP: "That's because you hate America. We need the STOP bill passed now to protect us from dangerous terrorism."
Rest of Congress: "Agreed."
President: "Only if I can indefinitely detain suspects arrested on STOP charges."
Congress: "I guess."
President: "Signed."
Said it before and I will say it again, the list keeps growing:
You might be a criminal if:
you use the internet.
You might be a criminal if:
you want to get on a plane
You might be a criminal if:
you post bird songs on you tube.
You might be a criminal if:
You build a better widget than a big corp and try to sell it.
You might be a criminal if:
You run an SMTPD server
You might be a criminal if:
You run Linux
You might be a criminal if:
you take photos of police officers.
Feel free to add your own.
It's likely there has always been a backdoor to Skype. The Austrian government seems to claim that tapping Skype is not a problem. This article is from 2008: http://www.h-online.com/security/news/item/Speculation-over-back-door-in-Skype-736607.html
Yes, that's what I'd prefer. We don't need to devolve into a police state to battle this tiny risk.
For comparison, being able to drive our own cars affords us a freedom of mobility. But at a cost of roughly 10 9/11s worth of killings per year. Time to give up our freedom to drive?
And if not, why should we give up even more important freedoms to achieve a smaller reduction in death?
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Given that Skype operates in countries (like India) where VoIP is illegal unless there is a back door, and Skype is said to be "in compliance", you *know* there is a back door.
You should of seen the look on Alice's face when Bob left with Eve.
Fuck that. If the populace keeps electing people who pass these laws, then representative democracy is working as it should. You don't withdraw your support from a government by "resisting". You lawfully withdraw your support from a government by expatriating (paying any required exit taxes on your way out the door), and denying it the revenue stream from your future taxes.
The US has a very effective financial Berlin wall built around the country. American Citizens and Permanent Residents (Green Card holders) are taxed on the basis of their citizenship/residency, irrespective of where they live. Want to renounce your citizenship? Fine. You'll still be taxed for an additional 10 years.
Good luck "sticking it to the man" through emigration.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
The smart ones go in for activity where they can make a lot of money without getting rung up very often.
Like investment banking.