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CALEA update
The article is actually an AP article, and this is a temporary URL but will probably remain available throughout today. If it's not available, just search your favorite news site which carries an AP feed.
Background: In 1994, the FBI, complaining about pedophiles and terrorists on the internet, got Congress to pass a law requiring all telecommunications providers to make their networks easily tappable. One example of the necessity for such which is still trotted out by the FBI is solving kidnappings - "What if your child was kidnapped?". However, try as I might, I can't think of any situation in which a wiretap (which has to be placed on a known entity) would help locate a missing child. If you know who's got the kid...go get him.
The primary stated reason for the law was that the telcoms were upgrading to digital from analog, and therefore the men in black couldn't just hook up an alligator clip to the wires anymore... the law was explicitly stated to NOT expand law-enforcement access to communications but simply make sure that they could access digital phone lines. The telecommunications companies fought the law until Congress added $500,000,000 in government subsidies for them, when they promptly shut up.
Unfortunately (but expectedly), the FBI has interpreted the law as granting them free rein to tap anything at any time. The FCC is granted the power to implement CALEA - and the current FCC commissioners would make Big Brother proud. So the FBI has sought and received, as of August 30, substantial additional tapping powers - they will now receive the current location of cell-phone users during the tap, the ability to listen in on conference calls even if the tapped party has left the conversation, and a couple of other minor enhancements which slowly yet steadily erode your privacy.
More important, the FBI has also sought the ability to tap packet-switched communications - by which I mean, of course, the big bad Internet. This authority, never enacted in law, has nevertheless been granted by the FCC, to be implemented by the telcoms no later than September 2001.
Recently there have been stories about companies in Russia having to provide the ability for police to tap internet communications. U.S. folks laughed at those poor bastards, living in a surveillance state. The only difference between Russia and the U.S. is: the Russians are more upfront about their surveillance.
See EPIC's wiretap page for more. -- michael
AP Text (which you better not link to, as I've probably breached copyright).
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The FBI reached a first-of-its-kind agreement
enabling telecommunications companies to use computer software made by
Nortel Networks to assist law enforcement agencies in conducting lawfully
authorized wiretapping.
The agreement calls for Nortel, a major supplier of telecommunications
equipment, to provide certain software to its carrier customers. Nortel will
waive the license fees.
The 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act authorized
$500 million for the purpose of reimbursing the telecommunications industry for
its costs in cooperating with law enforcement agencies in wiretapping.
``Carriers can now begin taking steps to correct technological impediments
within their networks that currently prevent law enforcement from being able to
carry out court-ordered electronic surveillance directed at suspected
criminals and terrorists,'' Attorney General Janet Reno said in a statement.
The telecommunication carrier Ameritech also is a party to the agreement. FBI
Director Louis Freeh said the bureau is working toward finalizing similar
reimbursement agreements with other carriers and manufacturers.
Even if the FBI could intercept any data that is out there, it would be completely useless to them if it is encrypted data. So long as the FBI is not granted a magic key by either consensus among crypto companies or by government regulation, privacy over the internet can and will exist.
As far as tapping digital lines... It should be allowed, but only with a court order. Just like it is with analog lines. Sometimes, there is a justifiable reason for a line to be tapped. Think suspected drug dealer here. The problem is not with the FBI tapping lines, it is with thee frequencey of which lines are tapped. Court orders for line tapping are given out too frequently and with too broad of a spectrum of reasons. Call your representatives in Congress and express your concern with this issue, they will listen (on occassion).
--
Matt Singerman
Matt Singerman
http://matt.vegan.net/
What worries me about making networks easily tappable is not so much the feds nosey actions, but the easy time other non-feds will have tapping networks. This is very scary. It not only compromises the privacy of those exchanging information via the network but also compromises the security of the network itself. Now that's a problem.
-- Moondog
I'm interested in any legal or technical experts who might care to comment on how this type of law affects people who run proxy (or other IP routing) services?
= -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Specifically...remember back in the "good old days" that penet.fi was one of the first host to allow some degree of anonymous access? After someone successfully sued in Finish court for the identity of one of the anonymous e-mailers, the service was shut down to prevent other people from having the same breach in privacy.
What if I ran a proxy service that would allow people to surf the web or other TCP/IP services anonymously?
Since I'm not a telecommunications provider receiving some federal funding...does that mean if I throw out my DHCP/DNS/IP logs every night I'm free and clear? Is there any part of this law that says I NEED to keep a backlog of this information so when the FBI comes knocking I can point out the TRUE identity of someone using my service?
I know there are several proxies out there right now but I do not know if any of them keep or toss information like this and I'm very curious to know if there's anything to mandate logging.
Personally...if I do run a proxy service...I'll probably play dumb and if some federal government want to pay for some training classes well then maybe I'll consider learning how to use the logging features of my proxy software.
- JoeShmoe
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-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
a lot of people respond to threats against privacy with this "if you're afraid of this, you must have something to hide" claim. it's a garbage argument, though. maybe today the feds don't have the technology or the will to listen to every fone conversation and prosecute every crime for which they gather evidence in this way, but if you look 10 or 20 years into the future, who's to say what the government will be capable of doing? why is it so unlikely that voice recognition and transcribing software and computer power won't have progressed to a point where "listening" to every call is possible? why are you assuming that after 20 more years of eroding our freedom and privacy, the government won't think this is a good idea?
in new york city, they arrest people for jaywalking because the mayor says it improves the "quality of life". lots of people agree with him. what if citizens in the future feel that complete monitoring of their lives increases their safety? what if the government just decides it's in our best interests to be monitored?
any legislation or policy which makes it easier for the government to invade the lives of the public is BAD. b-a-d bad.
All the more reason we should all routinely encrypt everything that goes over the network. What is needed is more seamless encryption tools, e.g. if all e-mails are routinely encrypted/de-crypted using public key cryptography without intervention from the user, most people would probably do so.
If internet communications are routinely strongly encrypted all this Big Brother business would become moot. To be sure there are legitimate reasons for the feds to snoop on people, but such a power will be abused (either officialy or by "rouge" agents)
Also this is fundamentaly different from tapping phone conversations in that more and more transactions now take place over the net. Net surveilance would not only include person-to-person communication, but also financial transactions, purchasing habits, reading habits etc etc.
It seems to me that the feds don't really have a compelling reason for this otherwise they would be able to come up with a better reason than the tired old Terrorists/Pedophiles/"Think of the Children" justification.
Have you actualy ever seen any terrorists --Brazil
<rant>
And most importantly, don't forget. A lot of people feel ignored online because a paper letter still counts more than an email to a politician. That's because the pol expects the emailer to have forgotten about this by Election Day -- not so easy to do if you're so steamed you can write a letter, lick a stamp and send it. (Or so the theory goes.)
The FCC is appointed by the President -- tell him (or, better yet, the party he's from) that they won't get your vote as long as shenanigans like these persist. And do it, too. Don't buy that "you'll throw your vote away" crap -- if 89% of this country didn't vote for the Democrats or Republicans, how much of a waste is that? IMO, you're probably wasting your vote if you do vote for the two major parties, since both of them probably represent many, many views you find repellant, no matter who you are.
A candidate that forms his opinions based on an overriding philosophy that you agree with may still come down on the wrong side, but with less frequency, and probably not nearly as wholeheartedly as a politician who just checks the party scoresheet -- most of which was probably written by the biggest contributors this week.
I hate to sound so vitriolic, but the ineffectiveness in American politics is the result of the apathy of its citizens -- fostered by those currently in power that characterize our system as "imperfect, but the best we can do."
Well, half-truths are half-right -- it's certainly imperfect, but the two parties that are exactly as different as Coke and Pepsi that is, as different as they need to be to convince you there is any difference at all. Small voter turnouts only help them engineer the elections better -- turn out in force, and vote for the candidate you feel most comfortable with, even if you think he'll only get ten votes.
Treat politicians like employees, or better yet, like vendors -- there's plenty of vendors. If we do, maybe we'll get some customer service. phil
</rant>
Yeah, and if the DEA kicks your door down, there's a really good chance you're a drug dealer right? Too bad for the old man who had a heart attack cause they got the wrong address, so sad.
I get so tired of people who haven't ever been a member of a disapproved minority thinking that everything is wonderful in America. This is how America oppresses people -- by making sure that 80% of the citizens never see it or experience it. It works wonderfully well too, especially when combined with TV brainwashing, the whitewashed Amercian history taught in schools, and the puff pieces that pass for journalism these days.
Occasionally, the mask is torn -- Vietnam, Watergate, S&L scandal, Rodney King, etc. But folks just go right back to sleep after the media circus like good little sheep. Gaahhh!
Suppose a legal but unscrupulous adult web site redirects you to an illegal child porn site? (Just to build up their ad counts). It's happened to me, and I got out as quickly as I could. But if the FBI has the broad powers, they can identify you as a patron of the site and launch a further investigation. How are they supposed to know you were tricked? How can you prove you didn't go there intentionally? And this whole thing about Kidnappers is total crap, exploiting our deepest most primal fears just to get their way.
2 Things:
1. The FBI wants to tape the first 10 seconds of every call, and store it in an archive.
They want these tapes "just in case" they need to monitor conversations that happened in the past.
They can do this very easily because CALEA allows the feds to log into a switch and electronically listen to any conversation they want to, since the information will be sent straight from the switch to the FBI office over a high speed fiber connection.
Previously the Feds had to attach something physically to the wire to listen in, now they just telnet to the switch and have complete access!
2. It's not just Nortel that's providing the software. Lucent, Ericsson, and every other telephone switch provider in America is required to have this functionality by December 1999.
If they do not comply, they will be heavily fined by the government.
Lucent switches, the core of the Bell network, will have this functionality by October 1999.
That's next month!
We have to do something about this now!
-- Rose Kennedy (A former telecom switch programmer)
Am I the only person who is starting to view these words as red flags?
At the height of the War on Drugs, it seemed that the fastest way to get something passed was to say that it was designed to thwart drug dealers. Now that the American public has grown a little more skeptical of this rhetoric, we've moved on to terrorists. Terrorists are the new boogeymen -- we must do whatever it takes to stop them. You, the citizen, need to forget the Constitution for a while because we, your leaders, are trying to fight terrorists.
We did this with McCarthy (sp?), too. The Reds had to be stopped -- First Amendment be damned. Haven't we learned? What is the next boogeyman? Will it be those porn-downloading, foul-mouthed Anonymous Cowards on the internet?
And then there's legislation for "the children". Long after we've come to our senses with "Commies", "Drug Dealers", and "Terrorists", we'll still be passing stupid laws to "protect the children". It's too dangerous politically to oppose anything cloaked in a "protect the children" argument. It inspires a nice emotional knee-jerk response in the voters and shuts down the higher reasoning and skepticism functions of their brains.
I'm not denying the presence of drug dealers or terrorists in our world today, but I'm tired of leaders who can't come up with better ways to protect me than to force me to give up freedoms and privacy. It has the characteristics of a power-grab disguised as "protection". That is not "protection", it is "manipulation".
If this the only protection they can offer, I prefer to watch out for myself, thanks.
Sorry for the essay. I'll go back to work now.
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
...but not by any of this legislation.
It honestly sounds like most of you people would prefer that law enforcement have *no* ability to collect evidence. No wire-taps, no search warrants, no security cameras.
I don't think I have *ever* read a Slashdot article with this number of posts and NOT A SINGLE FACT OR STATISTIC backing ANY of your objections up. No numbers, no statistical trend showing the number of illegal or unnecessary wiretaps, nothing. You are all simply feeding on each other's fears and magnifying them to a horrible frenzy.
Do you people really wish to live in a place where the privacy of every person is held in the highest regard -- untouchable even in the most extreme of circumstances? I take COMFORT in the fact that my law enforcement bodies are able, through a court approval, to discretely and confidentially monitor communications -- in any form. Like most of you, I have no statistics, but I wouldn't be surprised at all if wiretaps aided in a significant number of prosecutions that would have been impossible without them. People -- we do have checks and balances in our governments. Statistics on wiretaps are collected and analyzed. If a group of people are requesting an ungodly number of wiretaps while producing few prosecutions, this will be noticed.
I am also extremely displeased by the high degree of bias in these "Your Rights Online" pieces. The "author" bringing the stories to us also brings his editorial along, complete with conspiracy theories and the invariable "Big Brother" tie-in. To privacy activists, this is pure adrenalin, hence the high number of very vocal anti-government and anti-law-enforcement posts.
Now, before you folks unleash your fury on my "naive" and "ignorant" ass, let me just say that I obviously don't want to see these types of things abused, but we DO already have oversight in place to see that this doesn't happen. If you feel that judges are being "tricked" into allowing wiretaps, or that these judges are "in" on the conspiracy with the cops to violate your personal privacy for their own kicks, THIS is what you should be working to fight.
Don't hinder law enforcement's abilities to conduct investigations in a LAWFUL and DISCRETE manner just because there exists the POSSIBILITY that these abilities will be misused.
Do you folks think that people in charges of these law enforcement organizations and the people appointed to act as judge are all complete IDIOTS? I'm perfectly willing to concede the fact that a small number of these people are, in fact, stupid people, but that does *not* mean that these organizations are collectively out to ruin your lives and your privacy for their own kicks. These people are fully aware that there are privacy activists out there that would have a field day if they fuck up, with a result of them being out of a job.
PLEASE don't read and take things at face value. THINK FOR YOURSELF and don't just jump on the frightened privacy bandwagon until you make an informed decision on your own. The government is NOT OUT TO GET YOU. If you don't like how your local law enforcement is behaving, you have two options: 1) Write a letter to your local government and media and express your concerns; 2) MOVE OUT. If you don't like how your national law enforcement is behaving, you have two options: 1) Write a letter to your congressmen and media and express your concerns; 2) MOVE OUT.
You people need to be working *WITH* your government to address your concerns, not *AGAINST* them.
Telephone companies have a "common carrier" status, which takes away many of their abilities to manage their lines and customers as if they were a truly private company and places a tremendous number of government regulations and protections on them.
Internet providers, however, have not been given this "common carrier" status. Thus, legally, your ISP can read your e-mail, monitor the web sites you browse, newsgroups you read, posts you make, whatever they want. They don't do that, of course, but they could probably get away with it legally (though they would probably go out of business as a result).
Bald Wookie dun said:
To tie a minor thread on this...oddly, the three legal drugs (caffeine, nicotine, and alcohol) are known to not only have as many bad health effects as many of your illegal drugs, but in some cases are every bit as addictive or moreso.
To give an example--nicotine, which is legal to the point of being an OTC drug, is now known to be as addictive as, and probably more addictive than, opiate narcotics and probably is equivalent to or even slightly more addictive than cocaine on "liking indexes" (measures of physical addiction that show how hard it is to "kick the habit") and by biochemistry. Some scientists studying the mechanisms of addiction have stated that nicotine may be the most addictive substance known...smoking is well known to cause health problems (just read a cigarette packet, already), cigarette manufacturers are known to "dope" cigarettes with nicotine (this came out publically in the tobacco hearings in the US, and has been common knowledge for years if you live anywhere near a cigarette plant or know employees--there's vats that if you so much as touch they HAVE to send you to hospital because those vats are full of nicotine and have nicotine residue on the outside to the extent it will give you nicotine poisoning, and nicotine poisoning is NOT fun--much the same effects as strychnine poisoning).
Alcohol, too, has known health effects if taken in excess, is poisonous in quantities only slightly above that necessary to get one bombed, slows reflexes enough that one becomes dangerous if one tries to drive, and is known to cause physical dependence. In fact, a fair number of liver transplants in adults have to be done because of cirrhosis of the liver--basically the liver gets burnt out by long-term attempts to detoxify ethyl alcohol once one gets physically addicted to it.
If we want to talk prescription medications, some opiates are actually available over the counter (Cheracol and, in some states, paregoric) and most are schedule IV or III (addictive potential, but you've got to take a fair amount) drugs...benzodiazepine tranquilisers are KNOWN to be physically addictive (most responsible doctors will NOT give you more than a week's supply of Valium or Xanax for that reason)--are every bit as physically addictive as morphine in fact, taking them with alcohol or driving whilst taking them is a good way to get one's self dead, and yet they're only Schedule IV.
Marijuana is not known to be physically addictive (the only indications of physical addiction are in rats given obscenely huge doses) and doesn't necessarily have to be smoked (some of the bad effects of smoking are from the smoke itself; ANY smoke will give off carcinogens if you burn organic material). Psychological addiction is probably another story, but people can get psychologically addicted to everything from sex to Quake to reading Slashdot (you could seriously argue that autistic kids are psychologically addicted to "self-stimming" [rocking back and forth, or smacking one's self...the kinds of "stereotypical" actions you see in a lot of autistic kids; they do this to calm themselves down after being overstimulated--the major problem in autism is that they essentially can't filter out stimulus and/or are oversensitive to it--rainfall might sound like millions of hammers on tin, and in the worst cases sight and sound and smell might blend all into each other not unlike how one's senses get scrambled on LSD; a good way of thinking of how severely autistic folks have to deal is they are undergoing a perpetual bad acid trip] because it's relaxing :), and the mechanisms for psychological addiction have more to do with probable imbalances in body chemistry to begin with rather than body chemistry being altered by a drug itself. The worst effects that have ever been proven for long-term marijuana use are maybe problems with memory; the jury is still out on whether pot reduces initiative [for that matter, so does alcohol; so does Valium--both of these are quite legal]. Marijuana has several beneficial uses, not the least among them being as a mild tranquiliser and possible antidepressant, and the only known treatment for AIDS Wasting Syndrome and wasting syndromes of cancer.
However, pot is still illegal--Schedule I. Oddly, pure THC is Schedule II (same as morphine) and legally sold as dronabinol, though it's not been proven to have the same bad health effects as morphine or amphetamine. I've heard that this is largely due to lobbying by alcohol companies after Prohibition (they didn't want pot cutting into profits--especially since they were having to recover from the LAST War on Drugs, folks finding out there were better drugs and better drugs FOR you could well have caused serious hurt to the spirits industry in the US).
Now, to steer this back on topic--I think that giving anyone in power to tap into someone's convo IF THERE IS NOT EXISTING PROOF THAT THE PARTY IS DOING A BAD THING is just plain Wrong and WILL ultimately be abused. Period. Look at COINTELPRO or records of the CIA's investigation of Catholic refugee support groups if one needs examples...or the list of groups listed as Officially Subversive (which includes--and I am not making this up--the SCA, the Jihad Against Barney the Dinosaur [must have been that "jihad" word ;)], the NAACP, Amnesty International [because AI has reported on how the US commits human rights violations and supports groups that violate human rights in other countries], Human Rights Watch [same thing], most people who have protested major military actions, and probably by this date the EFF and Slashdot's entire membership :). It is entirely possible that we could get Bad Folks in government and this info could be used against one.
For instance, I happen to think fundamentalist "Christianity" sucks arse (largely because I grew up in a family of raving fundies, and I've seen enough of the bad side of the Religious Reich to REALLY make yer hair curl--folks drooling over any possibility that nuclear war might break out and bring the Rapture early is damned scary, and I'm just now realising just HOW wacko some of what goes on in there was). As a result, I do support groups fighting the influence of the Religious Reich as well as groups speaking out against religious abuse in general.
I also happen to know that more than a few fundies, including people from the very church I left, are...to put it mildly...extremely active in politics from school boards on up [this is what likely happened with the Kansas school board, btw; it's been a position plank of the UnChristian Coalition and a number of groups even FARTHER to the right to take over the school boards and move up from there to infiltrate political parties]. (Some of you in Kentucky might recognise Frankie Simon's name...for those who don't, let's just say he's trying his best to outdo Fred "godhatesfags.com" Phelps, and also happens to be the head of most of the fundy and pro-censorship groups in Kentucky. And happens to be a deacon at aforementioned fundy pit, and most of the rest of the "deep in" members of the church are as rabid as he is...nasty place.)
If--God and Goddess forbid--one of these fundy groups were to get a candidate in who could appoint heads of the FBI or a state equivalent, I can GUARANTEE you that everyone in the US or in that state who is a member of the ACLU, People for the American Way, a member of an anti-censorship group, anyone who's ever supported or has run a Fairness campaign so people can't be fired just for being gay, anyone who has ever talked publically about being a walkaway from a Bible-based coercive group or who operates a walkaway group for folks escaping from Bible-based coercive groups, and a fairly long list of others WILL end up on a shitlist somewhere...and they will probably abuse the "secret wiretaps" so they can hope to find something to bust these folks on. (An example I can think of off the top of my head--a walkaway or gay-teens support group talks to a kid who is having real doubts about fundamentalism because he's discovered he might be gay...and the state just passed a law against kids getting any counseling at all without parental consent...except the kid CAN'T get parental consent because if he stated he had doubts about fundamentalism and/or he was gay he'd be putting himself at severe risk for physical abuse and/or basically being psychologically tortured by the church members trying to "exorcise" the "demons of rebellion" or the "demons of homosexuality" out...and yes, people have died in these before, and many more have ended up in mental hospitals).
What if the Scientologists were somehow to persuade the FBI to investigate everyone who posts on alt.religion.scientology so they can get more info to harass them? What if they do it JUST to harass them (yes, they've pulled stuff like that before)?
There's just too much potential for abuse in this...I'm beginning to wonder if there's hope to fix this other than setting up either a PAC for Internet users (one is being worked on called USORS) or starting a third party expressly for the Internet-connected...and I've been giving really serious thought to the latter recently... :)
-Windigo The Feral (NYAR!)