Feds Want to Tap VoIP 489
An anonymous reader writes "From the Globe and Mail: The FBI and the U.S. Justice Department have renewed their efforts to wiretap voice conversations carried across the Internet. Federal and local police rely heavily on wiretaps. In 2002, the most recent year for which information is available, police intercepted nearly 2,200,000 conversations with court approval, according to the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. Wiretaps for that year cost taxpayers $69.5 million, and approximately 80 per cent were related to drug investigations."
Bound to happen... (Score:4, Insightful)
What happens if... (Score:4, Insightful)
FBI can already tap VoIP, just not easily (Score:4, Insightful)
That's why we have crypto! (Score:5, Insightful)
And when they outlaw the tech, remember that you can learn how to write encryption software yourself. See Ciphersaber [gurus.com]. There you'll learn to write your very own crypto code, and you'll remember how to do it again. I did it a few months ago and could still code something decent up
So don't worry about this. Just encrypt, and when encryption becomes illegal send lots of random data (netcat
Mandatory Zimmermann Quote: (Score:5, Insightful)
The right to privacy is spread implicitly throughout the Bill of Rights. But when the United States Constitution was framed, the Founding Fathers saw no need to explicitly spell out the right to a private conversation. That would have been silly. Two hundred years ago, all conversations were private. If someone else was within earshot, you could just go out behind the barn and have your conversation there. No one could listen in without your knowledge. The right to a private conversation was a natural right, not just in a philosophical sense, but in a law-of-physics sense, given the technology of the time.
But with the coming of the information age, starting with the invention of the telephone, all that has changed. Now most of our conversations are conducted electronically. This allows our most intimate conversations to be exposed without our knowledge. Cellular phone calls may be monitored by anyone with a radio. Electronic mail, sent across the Internet, is no more secure than cellular phone calls. Email is rapidly replacing postal mail, becoming the norm for everyone, not the novelty it was in the past.
Until recently, if the government wanted to violate the privacy of ordinary citizens, they had to expend a certain amount of expense and labor to intercept and steam open and read paper mail. Or they had to listen to and possibly transcribe spoken telephone conversation, at least before automatic voice recognition technology became available. This kind of labor-intensive monitoring was not practical on a large scale. It was only done in important cases when it seemed worthwhile. This is like catching one fish at a time, with a hook and line. Today, email can be routinely and automatically scanned for interesting keywords, on a vast scale, without detection. This is like driftnet fishing. And exponential growth in computer power is making the same thing possible with voice traffic.
Perhaps you think your email is legitimate enough that encryption is unwarranted. If you really are a law-abiding citizen with nothing to hide, then why don't you always send your paper mail on postcards? Why not submit to drug testing on demand? Why require a warrant for police searches of your house? Are you trying to hide something? If you hide your mail inside envelopes, does that mean you must be a subversive or a drug dealer, or maybe a paranoid nut? Do law-abiding citizens have any need to encrypt their email?
What if everyone believed that law-abiding citizens should use postcards for their mail? If a nonconformist tried to assert his privacy by using an envelope for his mail, it would draw suspicion. Perhaps the authorities would open his mail to see what he's hiding. Fortunately, we don't live in that kind of world, because everyone protects most of their mail with envelopes. So no one draws suspicion by asserting their privacy with an envelope. There's safety in numbers. Analogously, it would be nice if everyone routinely used encryption for all their email, innocent or not, so that no one drew suspicion by asserting their email privacy with encryption. Think of it as a form of solidarity.
Senate Bill 266, a 1991 omnibus anticrime bill, had an unsettling measure buried in it. If this non-binding resolution had become real law, it would have forced manufacturers of secure communications equipment to insert special "trap doors" in their products, so that the government could read anyone's encrypted messages. It reads, "It is the sense of Congress that providers of electronic communications services and manufacturers of electronic communications se
providing material benefit to "terrorists." (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Law Enforcement and Technology (Score:5, Insightful)
That's nice for you, but I wouldn't trade my privacy in silly conversations for the (illusion of) safety in America. Neither would a lot of other people. The problem is, you can't just trade your privacy by endorsing wiretaps. You're trading everyone's privacy. Perhaps you'd like to write a letter allowing the government to listen to all the conversations they want, read your emails, and rifle through your files, but don't speak for the rest of the country.
Re:Can I be the first to say... (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're using IP-to-IP VoIP instead, the FBI will just use Carnivore.
If you're using crypto, the FBI will just break into your house/office and backdoor your computer.
One word: "Back Doors" (Score:4, Insightful)
through your favorite IPSEC VPN box (Netgear makes one for about $150)?
Probibly, eventually, manufacturers will be directed to provide "backdoors" much like cryptography schemes that the NSA et al have tried to push on the public.
Re:So we respond with Nautlius (Score:5, Insightful)
There are plenty of topics I could be chatting about on the phone that have zero sinister/criminal element but are extremely personal and undesirable to have eavesdroppers.
Re:Can I be the first to say... (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is exactly why the whole thing is silly. Do people really make unsolicited phone calls to discuss their criminal intentions with strangers, or do they usually only discuss these things with people they already know well, and thus are capable of distributing 1024-bit keys to before hand? Last time I checked, Al Queda wasn't using cold-calling to recruit new suicide bombers...
80%?? (Score:5, Insightful)
This would, of course, be a terrific argument in my mind, to just get over ourselves and find a better way to deal with drugs; i.e. make them legal in such a way so that people can have a good time and not pose too much of a threat to society (such as the laws pertaining to alcohol). 'Course that's just my opinion, I could be wrong.
Hyperbole++; (Score:4, Insightful)
What makes you think that Uncle Sam is going to listen to "everything you do"? Remember, this law doesn't give the gov't carte blanche to listen to the conversations of anyone it chooses to. It must show a court of law that there is sufficient reason that you are using the phone lines to commit a felony. All this law does is put VoIP on the same legal standing as traditional phone lines, with regards to wiretapping.
Equating the gov't trying to stop the illegal actions of mobsters and drug dealers with a police state is pointless hyperbole. There may be issues with wiretapping laws, but your posting certainly doesn't convince me. If there is anything wrong with this statute you'll have to find a better arguement.
ah yes (Score:1, Insightful)
god bless america!
Totally offtopic but (Score:1, Insightful)
Armchair Lawyer (Score:4, Insightful)
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Note that this article of the consitution does not say no searches and seizures. Just unreasonable ones. The courts have determined that with probable cause (and your definition is wrong, btw) a telephone may be tapped.
Oh, and also, the Tenth comes to mind here.. nowhere in the Constitution is the Federal Government granted the right to tap telephones, therefore they don't have it.
Yes, because clearly the Founding Fathers hated it when the British would tap their telephones....
Why not... develop encrypted phones... (Score:3, Insightful)
For instance, you could enter a keycode into a program, and it would re-format all voice data into meaningless noise without person X on the other end using the same (or a permutation of) the same code.
This would make wiretaps useless without... the code.
The cost to taxpayers (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not saying legalize everything, just treat addiction to hard drugs as a medical issue and let medical doctors prescribe for maintance while helping their patients. Marijuana (something much safer than alcohol) needs to be legalized and taxed.
Get the facts [drugpolicy.org] about marijuana. End the drug war now.
Re:So we respond with Nautlius (Score:5, Insightful)
For instance, at the rate we're going, I fully expect to see laws against two people conversing face-to-face and in private in my lifetime. It seems to me that every argument for intrusive wiretapping technologies applies equally well to a conversation held on, say, a beach somewhere.
By the way, I hate to say it, but your faith in law enforcement following the rules here, e.g., disconnecting after realizing the call isn't germane to their investigation, is positively retro. A day doesn't pass that doesn't seen yet another law enforcement officer exposed as being corrupt. [mapinc.org]
Power corrupts you know.
Re:So we respond with Nautlius (Score:2, Insightful)
First, they still have to get a court order, and get a judge to sign off on it. (If that requirement goes away, I'll get a lot more nervous.)
Second, there are only so many law enforcement personnel. They _can't_ listen to _everything_.
Third, why should they bother to listen to my calls? I'd have to do something to pique thier interest and make them want to. I'm quiet, keep a low profile, and tend not to do the sort of stuff a cop would find of professional interest.
Most paranoia is a defense mechanism. What the paranoid is _really_ afraid of is that they don't matter and nobody cares about them. If you can convince yourself that people are out to get you, you _matter_. You're important! Someone finds it worth the while to expend the effort to get you.
I'm not important. I don't matter (to the Feds, at any rate). That suits me just fine.
______
Dennis
As long as they have a warrant (Score:3, Insightful)
1) they have a warrant
2) they take the cost upon their own shoulders and not upon the company or individuals concerned.
What this means is that we must be vigilant about the laws surrounding warrants and how they are obtained.
Re:So we respond with Nautlius (Score:4, Insightful)
Before the advent of modern technology, it was easier to combat crime using low-tech means because low-tech means were used to commit the crimes in the first place. Bank robberies weren't done by hackers in a far-off countries accessing bank records via the Internet; they were done by crooks wearing ski masks weiding guns and stick-up notes physically entering the bank and running off with bundles of C-notes, leaving witnesses in their wake.
Re:I don't believe that you understand encryption. (Score:1, Insightful)
If you're saying that PGP (which uses public key encryption) hasn't been broken by the government, you're dreamin'
Encrypted VOIP product.. (Score:1, Insightful)
Cryptophone [cryptophone.de].
Guess what? Make VOIP tappable and only the true criminals will have untappable VOIP software.
Re:The most important quote (Score:5, Insightful)
Future headline: "MAE-East and MAE-West routers begin dropping ``UnTrusted'' packets; wireless traffic at all time high"
--
Keeping Pace (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:So we respond with Nautlius (Score:3, Insightful)
basically gives one the right to *not* keep a low profile if they wish. It is
possible for someone to do nothing illegal and still have their conversations
be used against them (blackmail). There is, of course, a need for law
enforcement, but it's a very fine line as to what powers they should have.
Both in the legal sense, and the what they can get away with sense (just
because something is inadmissible in court doesn't mean that they can't exploit
it to their advantage). In my opinion, we should just end the drug war and
there goes 80% of the need for wiretaps.
That's Why You Should Encrypt Your VoIP (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not the easiest program to use, but it does work well. It's development has been discontinued [fourmilab.ch], but you can still get the source code if you get it quickly. I'd like very much to see someone pick up its development, or to at least use its technology in a new program.
Re:ipsec (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Encryption ain't it all tapped out to be... (Score:1, Insightful)
I do think that we have a government that has far many more resources for breaking encryption. Its far more probable that they have specialized processors (with huge register sizes
Re:So we respond with Nautlius (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:So we respond with Nautlius (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Don't reinvent the wheel. Send it over SSL. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Encryption ain't it all tapped out to be... (Score:3, Insightful)
When the feds find out that a suspected mobster is using strong crypto, they don't call the NSA and have them try to crack it. They get a warrant, break into his house and install a keylogger on his computer, or a tiny bug in his VOIP phone, and tap it that way. Perfect crypto won't protect you from that.
Re:-1 PRISON RAPE ISN'T FUNNY YOU SUCK FUCK (Score:2, Insightful)
But... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:So we respond with Nautlius (Score:4, Insightful)
My stronger concern is a bit more fundamental. There's a strong push for broader police powers to cope with a perceived terrorist threat. That's very nice, but at some point, the threat of terror will abate. Then what?
In business, you win the game by showing a better bottom line than last year. In government, you win the game by being able to request a bigger budget and more staff next budget period.
Law enforcement agencies are bureaucracies. NO bureaucracy ever willingly gives up something once it gets it, and no police agency will willingly give up increased powers once they are given, even if there is no need for those powers.
There have already been enough occurances of government officials making fusses over one thing or another, simply to justify thier existance. I expect to see more than a few by law enforcement for the same reason.
I'm not worried about Voice over IP wiretaps per se. I _am_ worried about a trend towards increased police powers without a corresponding increase in oversight to insure they are properly used.
As for ending the war on drugs, nice thought, but how do you suggest it be done? I've thought on occasion that simply making drug use legal would solve a lot of problems. I don't especially care what other people do to feel good. And if some of those things get them killed by overdose or the like, hey, it's not like they didn't know it could happen.
I _would_ get positively draconian about injuries to _other_ people when someone was high. The same stuff you shouldn't do while drunk, you probably shouldn't do while high, and if you do it and someone is hurt or killed because you were impaired, the world _should_ fall in on you.
______
Dennis
Re:Bound to happen... (Score:2, Insightful)
shame if you just wanted to discuss your business plans in private though....
Re:So we respond with Nautlius (Score:3, Insightful)
Wiretap abuse in California and Philadelphia. (Score:5, Insightful)
For example, I have heard from former PacBell CO technicians that the wiretap and pen trace rate in the Los Angeles area is staggeringly high -- in some offices, upwards of 10% of the circuits have some sort of "tap" installed (From a remote terminal, a tap looked the same as a simple trace device that only records the number dialed, not the voice traffic on the line).
Unless of course the reason there is a tap on your line is not to produce admissable criminal evidence, but because you (or the line) a politcal activist, a nosy reporter, associated with an unpopular political organization, or just chose to support the wrong candidate in the last election... If you want to know more about government abuse of wiretaps (and increase the likelyhood of being the subject of a wiretap yourself), just do a little research into the past and present of communications intercepts and abuse by the public and private sector -- COINTELPRO, CALEA, RISSNET, MAGLOCLEN, IN-Q-TEL, Takefuji, DSC1000.Or just pick up a newspaper and read about the neverending stream of FBI bugging devices found in Philadelphia [philly.com] over the past three months...
Re:Look at it from the other way, though. (Score:2, Insightful)
I expect them to execute their duties within, and constrained by, the charter I have given them as my *elected* officials...to wit: to protect *my* interests without infringing on my rights to a reasonable expectation of privacy, and a presumption of innocence until proven guilty.
This 'protect me at my own expense' crap simply does not fly with me.
Speaking of risk...if you want to see my real opinion on this, I updated my thoughts a couple of days ago at www.frennzy.net, which is my own website....no sponsors...no reg required...just my own thought process. It's crap...but it's MY crap.
Perhaps you should question your government's motives, instead of their methods.
Let's stop Chasing our Tails (Score:3, Insightful)
It isn't always just perpetrators who cause the problems and impose costs on society. It's also the mere fact that our lawmakers have decided to make particular activities illegal. Not only do we spend billions enforcing a variety of behavior-restricting rules, we end up creating additional secondary rules that further restrict the rights of everybody and increase the power of the government. The copyright system is another good example. Reducing copyright protection would reduce the need to monitor and control every little electronic activity anybody performs, and to trend toward criminalizing any technology that might threaten the business activities of copyright holders.
If you suggest eliminating drug or copyright laws, people will immediately envision the streets littered with semi-conscious heroin addicts, or a world without music, literature, film or techical innovation because nobody has any incentive to create anything. Probably neither extreme would actually happen. On the other hand, a picture of a world where average people routinely curtail what they say and do for fear that they might look suspicious to the ubiquitous surveillance system is much more probable. There's already an empirical basis for it.
We should examine the root laws that spawn these secondary restrictions and determine which ones are really worth enforcing, not just in terms of the financial cost but in terms of the freedoms lost.
Re:The Real Wiretap Statistics 1968-2002 (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm only half joking... I suspect that the police in the USA do this just as often as the police in my own country. Dutch police have often been caught performing unauthorised taps (or illegal searches), not to gather evidence obviously, but to find clues, leads, and accomplices to the crime.
Re:what warrants? (Score:2, Insightful)
Actually I think that today the truth is the exact opposite of that.
3 years ago I was a conservative - a gung-ho libertarian in principle, and a Republican supporter in practice because that seemed the best hope for a non-expanding, limited government.
I'm sure that people like Bush and Ashcroft would now regard me as an extreme liberal. I'll support whoever is most likely to defeat Bush. These assholes are giving conservatism a bad name - they're not conservatives, they're closer to fascists. "conservative" means keeping things the same - things like the Constitution, citizens' rights etc. They're not conserving anything.
(Note to moderators: although this is a comment on a sig, it's not off-topic.)
Re:So we respond with Nautlius (Score:1, Insightful)
Yet another mind-bogglingly naive post modded up to 5.
There may still be countries where you can trust law enforcement to obey the law, but the USA is definitely not one of them.
"criminals, terrorists, and spies use VoIP" (Score:4, Insightful)
Quote from article:
The agencies have asked the Federal Communications Commission to order companies offering voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service to rewire their networks to guarantee police the ability to eavesdrop on subscribers' conversations.
Without such mandatory rules, the two agencies predicted in a letter to the FCC last month that "criminals, terrorists, and spies (could) use VoIP services to avoid lawfully authorized surveillance." The letter also was signed by the Drug Enforcement Administration.
I have put the following argument many times:
Ask Security Services in the US, UK, Indonesia (Bali) or anywhere for that matter, to deny this:
Internet surveillance, using Echelon, Carnivore or back doors in encryption, will not stop terrorists communicating by other means - most especially face to face or personal courier.
Terrorists will have to do that, or they will be caught.
Perhaps using mobile when absolutely essential, saying - "Meet you in the pub Monday" (human bomb to target A), or Tuesday (target B) or Sunday (abort).
The Internet has become a tool for government to snoop on their people - 24/7.
The terrorism argument is a dummy - total bull*.
INTERNET SURVEILLANCE WILL NOT BE ABLE TO STOP TERRORISTS - THAT IS SPIN AND PROPAGANDA
This propaganda is for several reasons, including: a) making you feel safer b) to say the government are doing something and c) the more malicious motive of privacy invasion.
Please see any one of my posts on this topic [slashdot.org].
Re:80%?? (Score:2, Insightful)
we need to keep in mind that the total cost of the "war on drugs" is way, way higher than that. it goes in the billions of dollars, and that without counting all the $ that goes to the mafia / drug cartels for providing their services.
i would go so far as to call this insanity. we have a lot of drug-related crime on all levels, from petty thieves to small dealers to entire drug cartels. we spend billions fighting drugs on all these levels.
it would be wiser to instead spent on the order of _millions_, e.g. a thousand times less, for drug treatment centers, for education, for how-to-use-it-safely-if-you-must guides, e.g. deal with the societal problems caused by drugs the soft way, and at the same time control the drug trade by monopolizing drug sales (of _all_ kinds). the state monopoly ensures that there is no advertising for drugs, and probably has enough income to pay for treatment centers etc. it is important that this monopoly does not proliferate drugs - it must be set up in a way that there is no business interest in getting more people hooked. therefore, it can only be done by the federal government. it's a big undertaking. but the benefits would be enormous:
- less people in prison (80% or so of imprisoned people are there because of drug related crimes)
- NO mafia and drug cartels. these businesses cannot compete with a monopoly on price.
- NO petty drug crime as drugs would not be insanely expensive anymore. you want to f*** yourself up with heroin? go for it. but you will get brochures and doctors with that, and eventually a big hospital bill... there is no cheating nature.
there seems to be an implicit fear that as soon as drugs are easy to get the entire nation will turn into stoner-zombies. i think this is completely unwarranted. look no further than places where drugs can be purchased freely today, e.g. Amsterdam. natives there don't even visit the coffeshops.
[disclaimer: i don't use drugs except alcohol and chocolate. my personal benefit from this plan would be limited to less crime and seeing my tax money go somewhere it does more good than just locking people up in jail]
What about the old fashioned way (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:"Two hundred years ago.." (Score:3, Insightful)
You're kidding, right?
Amendment I
(a) Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion
A bill "revoking" congress's power to add a refference to God to the pledge? Like that's gonna pass today? Conservatives would have a shit-fit.
(b) Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech
A bill forbidding congress to ban flag burning? No complaints from anyone there, LOL! And don't forget the internet "child-protection" laws that keep getting struck down as unconstitution? How many times in a row can those idiots pass the same freaking unconstituional law?
(c) Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom... of the press
Heck, now with the internet anyone and everyone can qualify as a member of the "press". Legislators generally have no love for the press, and expecially now they want to hold the press "responsible" "in our time of crisis" (terrorism). They would not take kindly to a bill "restricting" their ability to do anything.
(d) Congress shall make no law... abridging... the right of the people peaceably to assemble
Gay rights parades? KKK marches? Anti-war protesters? Globalisation protests?
The legislature loves go as far as the courts will allow them to in setting all sorts of rules, regulations, and permits on peaceful public assembly.
(e) Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom... to petition the government for a redress of grievances
Such people are lunatics, fanatics, and troublemakers stalking and harrasing public officials.
Amendment II
Yep, a problem like you said.
Amendment III
No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.
Ok, this one just seems archaic. I still don't think they'd appreciate restrictions being imposed on them "in our time of crisis" (terrorism).
Amendment IV
Forbidding law enforcement and intelligence agencies from doing their jobs execept with the prior permission of the courts? Good freaking luck! This one guts pretty much every relevant law since 9/11, wire tapping, search warrants, Carnivore, all sorts of stuff. It also guts the expedited subpoena powers granted to copyright holders' by the DMCA. It's none too helpfull for the "War on Drugs" searches and seiures either. Law enforcement loves their new powers to seize and sell "drug related" property and they never even need to bring a case, much less get a conviction. Law enforcement loves that one as a money-maker.
Amendment V
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime... blah blah blah
Can you say "terrorists"? I knew you could!
nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself
Can you say "give me your encryptions keys"?
Amendment VI
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial... yada yada yada
"Criminal's rights" is a dirty word and "speedy" is a joke.
Amendment VII
In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved...
Hahahahahahahah! A jury trial over a twenty dollar issue! Weeee!
Amendment VIII
Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
Again, the dirty word "criminal rights". I'd say there are a few spots they've gone beyond the excessive line, but how about things like the public sex offender registries? They don't exactly cry over "pedophiles" being attacked, so long as the attack isn't on the wrong person. [unc.edu]
Amendment IX
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Man, I really