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FCC Rules VoIP Must Be Tappable
Posted by
timothy
on Wed Aug 04, 2004 05:51 PM
from the that-brother-keeps-growing-bigger dept.
from the that-brother-keeps-growing-bigger dept.
pengie2 writes "The FCC has unanimously approved the U.S. Justice Department's bid to expand CALEA to broadband and VoIP networks, according to reports from SecurityFocus and News.com. This means, following a mandatory public comment period, service providers will have to wire their networks for easy law enforcement surveillance, the way phone companies do now. The feds have wanted this for a long time." Ebon Praetor adds a link to Reuters' version, writing "In addition, the FCC has decided that the push-to-talk, or walkie-talkie, functions available on phones from Nextel should also be subject to the same tapping regulations that regular phones are."
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Oh well it was nice while it lasted (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Oh well it was nice while it lasted (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Do try harder (Score:5, Insightful)
How about encrypt and encode your messages into images and then post them on places like fark or deviantart? Simple enough. I'm not stupid why would a terrorist be?
How about our good friends in the government get off their lazy asses and start passing legislations that will make people hate us less not more?
Parent
Do try harder-Trail of fears. (Score:5, Insightful)
People have been hating us since the beginning. That King George was pretty pissed off. Then there's that whole Hawaii thing. Or the Phillipines. So what makes the present special?
Parent
Re:Do try harder (Score:5, Insightful)
The only quality that a terrorist has in spades is FANATICISM. Did Timmy McVeigh sound all that intelligent to you? Do Bin Laden's broadcasts show an analytical mind? Does the IRA really seem to have it together, organizationally speaking?
Why then the assumption that they're magnitudes of times more intelligent than the rest of the lusers out there?
Parent
Re:Do try harder (Score:5, Insightful)
To be fair, fingerprints are a well known aspect of catching criminals. Despite that, people are still busted because they left fingerprints behind.
Think about that a bit before going into the "This is easy enouhg to bypass" rationale.
Parent
Re:Do try harder (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Do try harder (Score:4, Funny)
I'd much rather have seven porn stars.. I'm thinking that'd be much more fun down the stretch of the eons...
Yeah, yeah, it's rude and crude. Sue me.
Parent
Re:Do try harder (Score:5, Funny)
Shouldn't be too much of a stretch for an omnipotent creator, either.
Parent
Re:Do try harder (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, but then you have seven women endlessly telling you how they've had bigger.
Parent
Re:Oh well it was nice while it lasted (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Oh well it was nice while it lasted (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't need stegan-what-he-said. The picture can be the message. When the picture on a webpage changes, you carry out your instructions.
Someone is going to point out that anyone stupid enough to fly a plane into a building might have difficulty with advanced topics like steganography. Someone else is going to say that the NSA can crack it. That's all nonsense: folks have been putting a candle in the window as a signal for as long as there have been candles and windows, and the internet is a far more visible yet far less obvious way to send a signal.
Parent
Re:Oh well it was nice while it lasted (Score:5, Insightful)
Your method is indeed hard to defeat, but mostly because it's so severely limited in expressive power.
Parent
Re:Oh well it was nice while it lasted (Score:5, Funny)
Unless it's funny. That's why Al Quaida had to stop using it's initial protocol, which consisted of references to Natalie Portman and hot grits being poured into pants.
The number of question marks in the typical underwear gnomes joke - that's code too, if you know what it means. The frequent use of Admiral Ackbar saying "It's a trap" on www.fark.com - code. "In Soviet Russia..." jokes - not code, but that's just to throw us off.
Parent
Re:Oh well it was nice while it lasted (Score:4, Insightful)
But clearly not enough for their intel. The feds aren't asking VoIP companies to keep call logs that can be reviewed by subpoena. They're asking for the ability to actually tap the calls. Big difference.
Parent
Re:Oh well it was nice while it lasted (Score:4, Interesting)
And once they'd found it, and decrypted it, they'd still be left having to crack the code.
"Honey, could you pick up a chicken on the way home?" might mean "rent a van," "deliver the bomb now," or "Honey, could you pick up a chicken on the way home?"
The spooks are good, I'll give them that. I'll assume they'll crack my messages. .
KFG
Parent
Encryption anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's why anyone with half a brain uses (Score:5, Interesting)
Encryption is the way gents.
Simon.
The Police don't get to do this often . . . (Score:4, Informative)
Under 18 USCA 2518, the FBI has to apply for a warrant from a court before it can obtain a wire tap. This isn't your ordinary search warrant either. In the criminal justice realm, it's referred to as a "superwarrant."
There's a limit on how long the government can tap your phone for before it has to go back and re-apply. In addition, they've got to show a) the type of information the tap is going to obtain, and b) that there's no other way to get the kind of information they're looking for, other than a wiretap.
There are a few caveats for situations involving national security, organized crime, and immanent danger of death or serious injury, but even there, the agency intercepting the wire communications has to apply for a superwarrant within 48 hours of starting the tap.
Oh, and if they tap you, or try to get a warrant and fail, they've got to let you know within 90 days of ceasing surveilance (or of the denial of the warrant application).
It's not like the government is running around tapping your phone lines willy-nilly.
--AC
Parent
Re:The Police don't get to do this often . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
Look, I don't want to pander to the tinfoil hat crowd, but I'm old enough (barely) to remember the scandal that COINTELPRO under the Nixon administration caused. Basicly, the FBI was used to spy on and discredit people and organizations that were perceived as enemies of the administration. I'm not convinced things have changed enough to prevent that from happening again. Why make it easy on them?
Parent
Re:The Police don't get to do this often . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
Benjamin Franklin: They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security
I would say that the "forces of security" are pretty much running free in Iraq. I'm sure they have no problems tapping whatever phone they like, surveilling who they please and Abu Ghraib showed that some use of torture was being done. This is not a state I would care to live in and neither would you in all likelihood.
However, this is not enough to stop domestic terrorism there, is it? People are still getting their heads chopped off on a regular basis. Hussein ran the place like a prison camp and was able to keep order. We've set up a wishy-washy police state and that doesn't work.
Increasing police powers in a mostly free state tends to lead to what Jerry Pournelle has taken to calling "Anarcho-tyranny". What is Anarcho-Tyranny? Well, basically the police have the power and the right to make any ordinary, law abiding citizen's life hell (witness the number of run-ins with the TSA of late) but not enough power or will to stomp down hard enough to eliminate terrorism, crime, etc. The police apparatus increasingly spends its time enforcing draconian and silly rules (don't take any pictures of that bridge son - http://www.brownequalsterrorist.com/artiststateme
The police have more than enough resources and powers to fight terrorism. The lead up to 9/11 did not involve a valiant group of law enforcement agents fighting against evil, ACLU controlled judges putting legal barriers in their way. No, it involved interdepartmental politics, head office vs branch office nonsense, head in the sand denial and would not have been prevented with more wire-tapping.
Parent
W-R-O-N-G (Score:5, Informative)
Hope you feel safe, 'cause if you gave up all those rights for ... whatever it was you got, then you just got angloed down, mi amigo.
Parent
Re:W-R-O-N-G (Score:5, Interesting)
I've been a fairly vocal critic of the Patriot Act, and have a lot of major concerns about it. I'm having a hard time getting all that worked up about what I read in that link you provided, though. If everything in the Patriot Act is really that tame, I'm going to go so far as to say that my worries were mostly unfounded.
Of course, I didn't read through the link with fine scrutiny, so I will allow that I may have missed or misread something, but if I did, I'd be very interested to hear what it was.
Parent
Re:W-R-O-N-G (Score:5, Insightful)
- use the local system by encoded(encrypted) in a different way.
- use a different means of communication.
Al Qaeda has been using human carriers as well as encoding into messages on the internet with switching prearranged e-mail addresses. For all intense purpose, we have no means of tracking them. And the feds know that. Patriot act was not intended to be used against terrorists. Good example is that Ashcroft promised many times prior to pat I that it would only be used against terroists. Then to help push pat II, he made the argument that it had been used against a number of drug pushers, rapists, etc. Ok, so these are bad people. But how soon does it get used against everyday citizens. My guess it about 2.5 years, about 1 month after it was passed.Parent
Re:The Police don't get to do this often . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
But, as the First Circuit Appeals Court have recently ruled, store/forward data is not covered under wiretap regulations, so your example is invalid. See http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/06/30/2
Oh, and if they tap you, or try to get a warrant and fail, they've got to let you know within 90 days of ceasing surveilance (or of the denial of the warrant application).
Unless it's Patriot-related, in which case you'll never know. And it'll *all* be Patriot-related, won't it?
Parent
Another issue too. (Score:5, Interesting)
Why can't someone and his criminal buddies just set up a SIP-based VOIP channel between them and encrypt the traffic? Seems safer that way....
Or better yet-- there are areas where VOIP would be *required by law* to be encrypted, such as between doctors discussing information protected under the HIPAA act.
Parent
Re:That's why anyone with half a brain uses (Score:5, Insightful)
That's the plan [fourmilab.ch].
"Trusted Computing" and "The Secure Internet" [fourmilab.ch] are double-plus ungood euphemisms for COMMAND & CONTROL (over you).
A world with 100% accountability is damn depressing. Anyone who says otherwise either hasn't seriously thought about the implications, or has, but thinks he's among the few who stands to benefit from stopping the natural freeflow of information.
--
Parent
For more information: (Score:5, Funny)
Immigration Canada [cic.gc.ca]
Data. Voice. What's the Difference? (Score:5, Interesting)
What about open source VoIP packages? Is anyone who sets one up suddenly a "provider?"
Voice Chat over AIM / MSN Messanger (Score:5, Interesting)
Is it illegal to write a small voice chat application with some encryption without a backdoor for the feds?
I'm sorry but there is no way to stop people from comunicating privately over the internet if they want to. Its a losing battle, thats costing companies that do fine work, such as VoIP far too much money.
Monitoring happens at the switch (Score:5, Informative)
Ditto for Nextel's PTT stuff.
Of course, you could use a VoIP provider that is based outside the US. That is going to present a problem for law enforcement.
Good (in appropriate measures)... (Score:5, Insightful)
Nevertheless, we also have a compelling public interest in keeping Big Brother from using the backdoor to enforce stuff that goes beyond keeping the peace and encroaches on our fundamental (and hard earned!) liberties.
The bottom line is that blocking all law enforcement access to these technologies is going to cost people their lives, but letting the pigs sniff around where they don't belong is going to ruin everyone's life. This is just another balancing act in the giant circus we call a democratic society.
So, rather than moaning about one side of this argument or another, doesn't it make sense to focus on getting just the right sweet spot in between?
Re:Good (in appropriate measures)... (Score:5, Insightful)
>
> So, rather than moaning about one side of this argument or another, doesn't it make sense to focus on getting just the right sweet spot in between?
There is no sweet spot.
Technology levels the playing field. Technology is an equalizer. A little over a century ago, "God made all men. Sam Colt made them equal." Today, most democracies and representative republics, even the US, have gun control.
If you and I can encrypt our conversations using a microphone, a computer, some Free client-side software, and some TCP/IP packets, then so can the bad guys. We're all potential providers of VOIP service. ("When outlaws have strong crypto, all crypto ends up outlawed!" :)
In an age where technology equalizes citizen adn terrorist, there's no balancing act to be had: Choose - security or liberty - because you can't have both.
So we bring out Ben Franklin - fine. But it's been three years. The people have spoken, and made it pretty clear that they neither want nor deserve either liberty or security.
And if the job of a representative is to respond to his constituents' wishes as best as he can, then our reps are doing a pretty good job of it: Deny liberties to all, and protect the security of those whom they can protect. (Namely themselves and their future lobbyist careers. But it's better to see that secure than nothing secure. :)
Parent
VoIP-to-Phone needs another name... (Score:5, Insightful)
Get used to it (Score:5, Interesting)
The police will get a warrant with your name on it and take it to your ISP and tell them to tap your VoIP traffic. Your ISP will recognize it the same way your receivers client recognizes it. If it's encrypted the police will know you are using encryption. If your worth enough to them, they'll crack it.
They've had it all along for the landlines, there's no reason to think they'd change their mind at this juncture.
Criminal Privacy (Score:5, Insightful)
Why, a vote of FCC5-0Value? (Score:4, Interesting)
>
Then again there is always PGP encrypted P2P
>
Controlling Technology is like fucking without a condom
>
I am sure this will help monitor the common law abiding citizens. Just like Gun-Control keeps guns away from criminals and their organizations.
>
Then again maybe the above ain't no problem to tap. We should all always know that we are being monitored for the good of the nation and blessings of god.
>
OldHawk777
Tapping VOIP with Ethereal (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, the protocol analysis was excellent. And, sure enough, the dump of the data produced an audio file easily played with XMMS. I was shocked at how easy this was (and once again at how good ethereal is). I no longer have any illusions of privacy due to the 'obscurity' or complexity of the protocols.
So, next time your VOIP provider plays dumb over drop outs, give them a protocol analysis and an audio record of the problem.
Good news everyone! (Score:5, Funny)
Yay!
...
*a few minutes pass*
Your Rights Online: FCC Rules VoIP Must Be Tappable [slashdot.org]
Boo!
--
48 hr. Summary: All your rights are belong to US (Score:5, Insightful)
Is anyone else out there starting to get angry? How long until the Deparment of Homeland Security implants RFID chips in our necks? How long until employees are forced to get their employer's logo tattooed on their face after changing their last name and waiving all of their human rights in the employment contract.
Geeez..... what kind of America are we living in?
America, previously land of the free, now home of the Corporate controlled puppet government run by lawyers with the best healthcare taxpayer money can buy.
Immunity for None (Score:5, Insightful)
Black people have always known that our rights are revokable. It seems to me that only when it starts happening to white people that small things like "civil liberties" get to be a problem.
I expect this post to be marked troll or flamebait at best, but it's truly not meant to be that way. It's just the way I see the world because my husband doesn't even tell me how many times he gets pulled over by the police anymore. It's a routine occurence, not worth notice anymore.
Our church group is decidedly anti-Bush. I think most black folks are, despite the photo-op pics you'll see everywhere. Anyway, we had police officers taping our services now again because our preacher speaks out against the corrupt politics in our city and nation.
There is no need to protest because no one in authority cares and is probably behind it anyway. We simply did the next best thing and got a local cable station to air our services. No more police, they can just set the VCR now.
I see young men get harrassed by the police and their pockets turned out because their skin is dark. I know better than to go to the movies with a large purse or maybe even a purse at all on a crowded weekend day, because no matter how large the white woman's purse in front of me, mine will be the one to be searched.
As far as I can see, white people for too long have thought they were immune from this type of thing. It's probably not even the slashdot crowd. It's be the parents and the grandparents of the slashdot crowd.
I saw a post earlier here that asked, who will begin the revolution? I think it will begin right here.
Re:How feasible is this? (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Cracking encryption. (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Encryption can secure a communications link. Properly used Alice can talk to Bob with reasonable protection from Eve tapping the link halfway between them.
2. Encryption can secure stored data. Properly used, Alice could protect the files on her keychain should Eve filch it out of her purse.
Encryption will not:
1. Secure the ends of a link. If Eve physically installs a keylogger in Alice's keyboard then it doesn't matter what crypto she uses. Come to think of it, the old saw applies: all bets are off if an attacker has physical access to a terminal.
2. Preclude treachery and incompetence. Law enforcement may have threatened the other end of your link who is letting them see everything in return for light treatment. A while back, NPR ran a story about police officers who took over a kiddy porn website and roped in a pile of customers. Encryption doesn't help if the other end of the conversation isn't who you think it is. Maybe the other side left his passphrase taped under his keyboard. "Rubber-hose cryptanalysis" is what they call it when the police starting leaning on you.
3. Prevent the government from taking an interest in you. Certain uses of it may even draw their interest. Staying out of view of larger predators is often the best defense.
4. Conceal the existence of the link. Often the government only needs to prove Alice talked to Bob on 7/24/02 at 3:24p.
5. Somewhat OT but something else encryption doesn't do: Allow Alice to share data with Bob while simultaneously preventing Bob from divulging it to Eve. Both #1 and #2 apply. Bonus points if you understand what this scenario applies to.
What this all boils down to is that encryption is largely ineffective against old-fashioned police work. It is also worth noting that Al Queda and others are notorious for using low-tech communications and isolated organizational cells. Don't give those hunting you terminals and only the minimum in physical links to play with. If you're a criminal, try to work alone if possible and keep your mouth shut. If you are a crook or a terrorist, communications are the least of your problems. Your partners in crime and your own mouth are far more dangerous.
Parent
Re:How feasible is this? (Score:5, Funny)
What makes you think the government doesn't have some technology you can't even fathom?
If they were that far ahead, I'd be writing this from prison.
Parent
Re:How feasible is this? (Score:5, Interesting)
How science works. It consists of open, institutional critisism by qualified peers. The larger the community, the more people can and will contribute critisism.
In a world where this does not exist, it will invariably lead to many bad ideas, ideas that are not abandoned. Even though you may recruit the best brains on the planet, they are still just humans, and they can't perform without this critical component of how science works.
That's why I'm pretty sure that no major breakthroughs will happen in secrecy.
Smaller breakthroughs, OTOH, can happen in secrecy. It is conceivable that Shor's algorithm will be implemented on a secret quantum computer, but only after the civil society has done most of the work. They will certainly try.
Just take a look at the most hefty project we know was done in secrecy: Manhattan Project. They had the best brains. Still it was not very fundamental science, and many of the participants got bored out of their minds. It was definately not technology I can't fathom.
Parent
Re:The last thing I need... (Score:5, Funny)
See if they can make this illegal.
Parent
Re:The last thing I need... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Wrong (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:Good. And good Again. (Score:5, Informative)
It's not paranoia. These days people are being arrested [thenation.com] for carrying anti-Bush signs.
Parent
Re:Good. And good Again. (Score:5, Insightful)
Possibly. But since you seem to acknowledge that a given population has a contrary view point, do they have a valid reason?
but I have no problem with the FBI being able to monitor conversation between criminals.
Sure. I'd venture that on a pure principle level, most people don't.
The problems usually begin with what "criminal" means. The ones who write the law have a pretty good idea of how they want the law to be used, and at the start everyone thinks it's a super idea. "Criminal" is written pretty broadly, trying to cover "the bad guys".
As the cliche goes, if you're not a criminal, you have nothing to worry about. If you're paranoid, I'd guess you shut up anytime a cop comes within hearing distance.
Later on, however, the enforcers would really like to make use of this provision because it's pretty potent. So the definition of "the bad guys" shifts a little through any number of legitimate means, such as changing the scope of what a criminal is to adding new crimes that fall under the original scope.
Then, a set of events takes place and all of the sudden it's really bad to be a "terrorist". And a terrorist is sort of loosely defined, but definitely someone who is against "the state" and what it represents, using any and all means at their disposal, including disinformation and propaganda.
Do we have a right to privacy? Sure. Do we have a right to keep criminal conversations private? No. Is this subject to abuse? Sure. Will we be abused by criminals who conspire in private? Of course.
What's a "criminal conversation"? Because history assures us with countless examples that those who make the decision on what a "criminal conversation" is rarely do it with YOUR best interests in mind.
Is discussing with other like minded individuals your displeasure with the current George W. Bush administration and planning activities to educate the public on the facts and what they can do to kick him out of office a "criminal conversation"?
Want an example? The PATRIOT act, which did away with such minor things like habeous corpus (considered by many to be the cornerstone of our justice system and made no one above the law, one of the fundamental checks and balances ) and passed to deal with "extraordinary threat" in these "extraordinary times"..... being used for a copyright case. [slashdot.org] Legislation that bypasses most of the fundamental US Constitutional rights would NEVER be applied to anything frivolous.
Given the choice between giving criminals the freedom to conspire in private or the ability of the FBI to wiretap criminals, I've no problem opting for the former.
This is the beauty of the whole thing right here. Trivial means in the form of encryption exist that totally negate any benefit law enforcement would gain from such legislation. Most likely, these days, all the necessary tools exist on your computer right now (openssl).
The only people that this would be of assistance against are... well, idiots. Since you know you're going to be discussing things of particular interest to law enforcement, and they have the means to intercept it, it's in your interest to encrypt your communications. So, from a practical sense, the only information you're going to get out of this is that two people spoke to each other which is useless in court.
So... now what? We now have a system in place that's capable of catching none but the most utterly incompetent criminals and can be abused by the government against law abiding citizens.
I know! Let's outlaw encryption. That'll learn 'em.
In any case, the net is a public place. Nothing there is private.
This seems to be particularly specious reasoning. By the same token I can say that the entire planet is a public place, ther
Parent