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FBI Considers CALEA II: Mandatory Wiretapping On Every Device

Posted by timothy on from the putting-it-gently dept.

Techmeology writes "In response to declining utility of CALEA mandated wiretapping backdoors due to more widespread use of cryptography, the FBI is considering a revamped version that would mandate wiretapping facilities in end users' computers and software. Critics have argued that this would be bad for security (PDF), as such systems must be more complex and thus harder to secure. CALEA has also enabled criminals to wiretap conversations by hacking the infrastructure used by the authorities. I wonder how this could ever be implemented in FOSS."

11 of 318 comments (clear)

  1. Time to clean house... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Given how well the intelligence agencies have 'protected' us these last two decades...

    Isn't it time to get rid of these assholes? Or at least save some money on our fake no help agencies?

    You could cut half of the people at the FBI, CIA, NSA, DHS, FEMA, TSA, DOD, And several others i can't think of...

    And we wouldn't notice any difference at all. None..

  2. Sheesh by trifish · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is where a true police state begins. An ear and eye in every device. Wake up before it's too late.

    Never allow laziness of police forces to erode your civil liberties and freedoms.

    1. Re:Sheesh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      This is where a police state ends. The begin is far behind us.

      No, you have no idea what a police state really is. Ask the East Germans for that.
      Mandatory wiretapping in consumer devices (with the outlawing of FOSS because it simply wouldn't be able to comply) is where the State of Law ends, and the police state begins.
      And incidentally democracy dies definitively once and for all.

    2. Re:Sheesh by swalve · · Score: 5, Insightful

      That's just it. You can't blame a dog for licking you. Law enforcement wants every tool it can have to do its job. They aren't necessarily bad or jack booted thugs, just trying to do what they do. If I was a signals intelligence person, of course I'd want to be able to tap ALL the phone lines. I'd only want to do it legally, but that wouldn't stop me from demanding the option was there. And I'm sure law enforcement/intelligence, more or less, wants to do the right thing. Unfortunately, giving power to the government when you trust it means they have that power when you don't trust it.

      I mean, look at this stupid IRS scandal. All the people screaming about the abuses of power are very closely intersected with the people who wanted ACORN investigated. If we allow or demand that the IRS investigate the entities we don't like, that means they have the power to investigate whoever they want, depending on the political winds.

      The trouble is in Congress for their lack of oversight and forethought. Compromise is supposed to more or less cancel out partisan lunacy, but instead they just act like children and "Casablanca" inspectors. Shocked, they are, that abuse is going on.

    3. Re:Sheesh by gmuslera · · Score: 5, Insightful

      That they force mandatory backdooring every software will mean that even you in europe will have your computer backdoored too, by US law. And of course, all the services that you use that are hosted or goes thru US will have all communications monitored, even yours. And if you do something they don't like, they are a lot of precedents that they could get you in a way or another. They are spreading their version of "freedom" all around the world by now.

    4. Re:Sheesh by s.petry · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I believe you miss the point, which is that the Police state started creeping in long ago. For posterity, it had to creep in.

      Long ago, a Police state could occur in a swoop because a massive army of police could run down on an unsuspecting public. Advancements in communications have made the level of secrecy required to build up such an army nearly impossible. To think that the people in power didn't realize that fact is sheer idiocy.

      This is why it's a progressive amount of force and liberty erosion combined with a massive media campaign, and has been for at least 20 years. The amount of propaganda is increasing with every EO that erodes some civil liberties. In addition, the rhetoric to pit average people against each other has been increasing from media and politicians as well.

      It is, a very well coordinated attack. Lots of people have been catching on and voicing alarm calls. Others are clueless as they simply live in the proverbial cave (Plato/Socrates). Still more hear the alarms but fear cognitive dissonance and change so much that they deny what is very plain to see if you care to look.

      --

      -The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.

    5. Re:Sheesh by BoberFett · · Score: 5, Insightful

      More laws are passed in this country than any person can keep up with. I'd have to dig it up, but there was some research done on the number of laws the average American breaks every day without doing anything truly "wrong" and doesn't even realize it.

  3. What? by Intrepid+imaginaut · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Why do critics need to argue anything? A simple no, get lost, should suffice. You don't need reasons to refuse law enforcement access to your communications, they need reasons to access them in the first place.

  4. Re:No possible way this goes anywhere by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is such a wildly inappropriate idea that if it gets any legs at all the reasonable powers that be will jump on it and squash it good.

    I cannot allow myself to believe we as a country are willing to seriously consider implementation of anything like this.

    That's the exact thing I said with all of the illegal wiretapping and privacy eroding laws they've been passing. The fact that someone thinks it's a good idea is scary enough.

  5. Re:What could POSSIBLY go wrong?!?! by Skapare · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The terrorists have already won.

    --
    now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
  6. Re:No possible way this goes anywhere by meta-monkey · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "America is great because America is good, and when it ceases to be good it will cease to be great."

    Of course America has made mistakes. But I always believed they were honest mistakes, by people who wanted to do good, but were wrong, or misguided, and we would eventually feel shame about these mistakes and work to correct them. Think Japanese internment camps, segregation. Awful things that show the inherent goodness of America by their correction.

    The day that idea died for me was the day in 2005 when Alberto Gonzalez's DOJ letters became public. That we're going to use mealy-mouth lawyer words to call obvious torture "not torture." That's pretty much it. Game over. We are not the good guys anymore, who can make any claim to a moral high ground.

    The slippery slope is so far above us we can't even see it anymore. Of course all the PATRIOT Act powers that were "just supposed to be for terrorists" got used for regular criminal investigations of drug dealers. And then we've got Obama assassinating people with drones, and it takes a Rand Paul filibuster to get the White House to say "meh, maybe we won't launch missiles at Americans on American soil." Of course a few weeks later some bombs go off in Boston and even Paul changes his mind and says its just fine to shoot missiles from the sky at a robber fleeing a liquor store. The RoboCop dystopia isn't even tongue-in-cheek anymore. At least the ED-209 told you to drop your weapon before it shot you anyway.

    Oh and when the criminal bomber was caught (allegedly, etc etc) we've got John McCain recommending "enemy combatant" status so we can indefinitely detain and torture him. When that happened I had just finished reading McCain's memoir, "Faith of my Fathers" a large part of which is about his own imprisonment and torture at the hands of the North Vietnamese and I had a really tough time reconciling the man in the book with the man on the TV screen.

    Our "rights" don't really exist anymore, because the state can just lawyer language them away. Of course you have a right to a fair trial! Unless you're an "enemy combatant." Cruel and unusual punishment? Torture? Absolutely forbidden! Thankfully waterboarding and sleep deprivation aren't torture, they're "enhanced interrogate techniques." And of course you're secure from search and seizure of your papers where you have a reasonable expectation of privacy. However, your email doesn't necessarily count as "papers," and they're stored on somebody else's server. And while you may assert a reasonable expectation of privacy over your email, the DOJ says you don't, so they can just read your email as they want, because they get to decide your level of expectation for you.

    So today, that the FBI want a backdoor into our communications? Not surprising in the least. I'd be surprised if they didn't. Par for the course.

    And now, thanks to this post, I'm probably on a watch list somewhere.

    --
    We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.