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)
Re:Bound to happen... (Score:4, Interesting)
They snuck the second PATRIOT act when they caught Hussein. [freeinternetpress.com] Sneaky, that. Who needs a judge for phone taps, financial records, etc? Maybe in Canada!
Re:Bound to happen... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Bound to happen... (Score:4, Interesting)
what warrants? (Score:5, Informative)
Its not 2000 anymore. Thanks to both Patriot acts (didnt you know the second one was passed in a spending bill?) judicial oversight is mostly a thing of the past. The constitutional protections we took for granted are gone. I don't know why John Ashcroft has such a problem with judicial oversight, but he does and Congress and the Executive branch not SCOTUS (as far as I can tell) don't seem to care much.
This is a very different America than just a couple years ago and we've already seen abuses with the Patriot act being used in non-terror cases like drug trafficking. This just opens up the door to more COINTELPRO and other FBI abuses.
Encryption is more important now than ever. Maybe when the post-911 hysteria and power grabs are over we can have faith in an iota in due process but right now "trusting your government" is the worst thing you can do. Worse, all justifications for recording communication can apply to all communication. If you agree with this, why not put little mics on every person in the country?
Not to mention, last I checked PGPfone is a free download and easy to use. If criminals wanted to speak freely they could use that with impunity.
Re:what warrants? (Score:3, Informative)
I don't see anything about "unless we think you're a drug dealer" or "null and void if we accuse you of terrorism" so there were protections there at one time.
VI In all cr
So we respond with Nautlius (Score:5, Informative)
Here's the home page. [berlios.de] Get the software here. [berlios.de] It hasn't been updated in awhile, but maybe now there's more of an incentive to do so.
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:So we respond with Nautlius (Score:2)
No need for wiretapping. The feds seeing your VoIP client connecting to uranus.preparationh.com is enough.
Re:So we respond with Nautlius (Score:5, Informative)
The analog phone network is pretty physically secure (messing with the wires through town will attract police, and the central offices are pretty secure places) so there's really not that much risk of an unauthorized analog wiretap.
The system's pretty good as it is, the spooks just want to make sure technology doesn't take away what's one of their strongest tools for stopping crimes before they get any worse.
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: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:So we respond with Nautlius (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:So we respond with Nautlius (Score:5, Informative)
We already have them. Look up some of the provisions of the RICO act, it might surprise you.
Re:So we respond with Nautlius (Score:4, Interesting)
No need to wait for that. A fictional, but plausible illegal conversation, circa 1865:
Conspirator 1: Psst, John, here's the gun. When are you going to do it?
Conspirator 2: Right after act one of "Our American Cousins!"
Conspiracy is illegal, of course. It the content of a conversation conveys information that furthers a conspiracy, then the conversation is illegal. For example, it would be illegal for me to to tell you when I was going to commit a murder so you could make sure my getaway car, er, horse, was parked outside Ford's theater at the right time.
Was not really a problem (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually, they didn't have too hard a time. They found the suspect, and questioned him - using whatever methods were deemed appropriate at the time - until they had a confession.
Easy as pie. No technology needed at all.
Forensics was initially very unpopular with law enforcement, as it meant a sh*tload of extra work, seemingly with no visible payoff. People who advocated it had a hard time keeping their rank.
Power corrupts you know.
I think that was my point.
Power doesn't corrupt neither more nor less than in previous generations, anyway. There is nothing new under the sun when it comes to how good or bad humans behave. Especially in a group.
That implies a workaround... (Score:4, Interesting)
So I can, for example, call my dealer, talk a few minutes about my hemaroids, and then I place my order. Wait until that gets out!
Re:So we respond with Nautlius (Score:3, Informative)
From a certain standpoint, yes it is.
However, I could probably get a white van, possibly get a few "magnetic phone logos" for the side, and dress up in a blue suit. Grab one of those locking devices for the phone company side of your phone box (outside the house, apartment, etc) and place a tap there. Transmit via wireless (even low power would allow me to sit on the street somewhere, perhaps acting as if I was on a cell phone...) and voila.
Now, thi
Re:So we respond with Nautlius (Score:4, Informative)
The rule that the cops have to stop listening when they determine that the communication does not concern the warrant only applies to real time communications, such as PSTN voice calls. They do not apply to interceptions of voice mail, email, VOIP and other electronic communications.
The major difference in interception of non-real time communicatons is that all communications are by necessity captured, the work of searching the captured communications is split into different areas of responsibility. The preliminary team winnows the raw communication to only those sections that relate to the warrant, the second team encounters the cleaned communication with just the portion that that is revelvant to the warrant, and sometimes produces a precis that will be used in prosecution of a case or to obtain further warrants. So at some point some person will be listening to you talk about your embarassing health problems.
Before PA1 and PA2 it was difficult to get a warrant for non real time communications and had a limited number of crimes for which it was even possible to obtain such a warrant (the Title III warrant of which you might have heard).
USC 18 section 2516 [cornell.edu] for the nity grity.
Anyone who knows anything about human nature realizes that these tap capabilities will be abused for a variety of reasons (most much more banal than political), so we need to have auditability and accountability for all taps - people who will abuse tap capabilities that they have access to will probably not get a warrant to do so.
There is also CALEA (which has different rules - most likely those that govern PSTN voice calls), which may or may not apply to various forms of electronic communications. Legal at my employer is still unsure, but thinks it is likely that at least some forms of VOIP are subject to CALEA.
Re:So we respond with Nautlius (Score:3, Interesting)
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 t
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:So we respond with Nautlius (Score:3, Insightful)
Can I be the first to say... (Score:3, Informative)
2) Good luck decrypting it
That is all.
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.
Re:Can I be the first to say... (Score:3, Funny)
Then sooner or later, Bubba will backdoor you in jail.
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...
Re:Can I be the first to say... (Score:5, Funny)
See? That nation-wide no-call list is good for *something*!
Re:Can I be the first to say... (Score:5, Interesting)
I see this as a HUGE deal. It doesn't matter that the real criminals will be using real encryption. The problem is that the Fed's want all networks to not only provide the tap, but do the collection work and carry the expense too.... Wire tapping has evolved from "the terminals on the phone were exposed, so we attached" to "you've got to build this capability into the system and carry the cost."
This is insane....no patriot would even consider allowing this.... Let's just pretend that we no longer have a "Bill of Rights".... or just that it simply has a dollar figure at the bottom that we're supposed to mail in....
What happens if... (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
2,200,000? (Score:4, Interesting)
Can VoIP be encrypted in such a way that even if it is intercepted, it is useless? What is to stop someone from writing code that does that? Or will the NSA get involved?
Re:2,200,000? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:2,200,000? (Score:2)
Re:2,200,000? (Score:4, Interesting)
When you roll out the unbreakable crypto (easy - although 1024 _may_ be crackable, 2048 is _not_ - at least yet), they wait for you to leave, break into you location, and install keyloggers, take encryption keys, add backdoors, etc. until they don't need to break your crypto.
Re:2,200,000? (Score:2)
Re:2,200,000? (Score:2)
Re:2,200,000? (Score:3, Interesting)
VoIP can easily be encrypted.
The real question is as people more and more get high speed internet access people could easily create their own VoIP set up. One that allows people to directly connect with another computer and talk with the user there. Now granted they already have this, but people add their own encryption scheme, and b
FBI can already tap VoIP, just not easily (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:FBI can already tap VoIP, just not easily (Score:2)
Yes, I believe with a court order they can break into your house/office and replace your copy of Skype with a backdoored version. But that has nothing to do with the article, which is about IP-to-PSTN VoIP providers.
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
Re:That's why we have crypto! (Score:3, Interesting)
I think it would be nice to have such a library so that any VoIP application writer can easily integrate the crypto functionality.
Re:That's why we have crypto! (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd suggest linking against a couple of common block ciphers -- perhaps 3DES, AES, and twofish [schneier.com].
Linking against twofish is trivial -- Niels Ferguson publishes a easy to use free twofish library in portable C. Twofish is unpatented, and the source code is uncopyrighted and license-free; it is free for all uses.
Another more generic option would
Re:Don't reinvent the wheel. Send it over SSL. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:That's why we have crypto! (Score:2)
Re:That's why we have crypto! (Score:3, Funny)
I always make that mistake.
(or, it was a cleverly encoded message.)
Re:That's why we have crypto! (Score:3, Interesting)
Essentially what happens is this:
1. Everyone makes a key.
2. ???
3. Profit!
Just kidding.
1. Everyone generates a keypair (a private key that decrypts messages, and signs things, and a public key that you give to everyone that verifies that signatures are from the private key [that presumably only you control], and encrypts t
Why does this matter? (Score:4, Informative)
So under the secret and unchecked FISA court, their powers are essentially unlimited.
This just means they are going through the formality of asking permission - if they don't get it, they'll get it through FISA anyway.
The most important quote (Score:5, Informative)
"The FCC should ignore pleas about national security and sophisticated criminals because sophisticated parties will use noncompliant VoIP, available open source and offshore," said Jim Harper of Privacilla.org, a privacy advocacy Web site. "CALEA for VoIP will only be good for busting small-time bookies, small-time potheads and other nincompoops."
Mr. Harper is absolutely correct, anyone with a little bit of sophistication can think of numerous ways around this legislation. Sorry Unlce Sam but the cat's out of the bag and there is no putting it back. Of course this will still be useful at catching small time drug dealers/users, and is another example of the drug war eating away at civil liberties.
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"
--
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
Re:"Two hundred years ago.." (Score:3, Informative)
<br><br>
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, <b>papers</b>, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated..."
<br><br>
I'd have to agree with the original poster that the only reason "conversations" isn't in the list is that no one imagined they could be unreasonably "searched" in the first place.
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 u
tapping UDP is hard (Score:2, Interesting)
At least with this fact in play we'll probably see some more decent voip encryption.
They'll only catch amateurs... (Score:5, Interesting)
Criminals are stupid, that's why they get caught (Score:2)
No. Criminals generally do dumb things and get caught, even the more intelligent ones. They only need to make one mistake. That is law enforcements advantage. Crime can be a pretty unforgiving profession.
Also, who says the amateurs, less sophisticated, less tech savvy aren't worth catching?
Re:Criminals are stupid, that's why they get caugh (Score:5, Funny)
If criminals were smart, they would be running telcoms or energy companies, or on Wall Street, hyping Internet stocks. Oh, wait....
Re:They'll only catch amateurs... (Score:2)
Of course, that's how it would work theoretically. However, even the most sophisticated enemies of the US government will occasionally slip-up and create soft openings that can be targeted. For instance, IIRC Nazi and Soviet agents both at some point mistakenly reused their one-time pads (or some such), giving the
How do they propose... (Score:4, Interesting)
Hmm... (Score:5, Funny)
Hang on, there's a knock at [Lost comm with host]
providing material benefit to "terrorists." (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:providing material benefit to "terrorists." (Score:2)
ipsec (Score:3, Interesting)
Is anyone else outraged that the feds spent $63 million just wiretapping phones for a black market that they created? 1.) Make a drug black-market. 2.) Spend $63 million wiretapping phone investigating the market. 3.) ??? 4.) profit!
Re:ipsec (Score:4, Insightful)
Skype (Score:2, Informative)
Skype is free and simple software that will enable you to make free calls anywhere in the world in minutes. Skype, created by the people who brought you KaZaA uses innovative P2P (peer-to-peer) technology to connect you with other Skype users. If you are tired of paying outrageous fees for telephony, Skype is for you!
Skype is quick and easy to install. Just download it, register, and within minutes you can plug in your PC headset and call your friends on Skype. Skype calls have excellen
Re:Skype (Score:2, Funny)
Skype is spyware (Score:4, Informative)
(c) the skype software is utilized and distributed by third parties
which are unrelated to skyper. you acknowledge that installation of
the skype software will allow third parties who are not affiliated
with skyper the ability to access your computer ("outside parties").
you agree that skyper will not be liable for any damage, claim or loss
of any kind whatsoever, including but not limited to indirect,
incidental, special or consequential damages as stated in paragraph
9(a) above, resulting from any actions or omissions of the outside
parties.
Bottom line: Skype is a backdoor to the machines it is installed on -
for some undisclosed "third parties", not really what you want to hear when it comes to "secure" software egh
Official government documents... (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Encryption ain't it all tapped out to be... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Encryption ain't it all tapped out to be... (Score:5, Interesting)
Wow, you should really take off the tinfoil hat and read up on cryptography a little before your next post.
The secrecy of a cypher should rely entirely in the key (see D. A. Kerckhoffs). Put another way, knowing the algorithm used should not compromise a good cypher. In fact, most of the better, more trusted cyphers are published, and have been subjected to many many man-years of cryptanalysis without yielding attacks that do much better than brute force key searches (which is why we trust them and conversely why propriatary/homebrew/secret algorithms are shunned).
In the case of blowfish, to my knowledge there are no known attacks that are effective against the full 16-round cypher. There are weak keys, but it's unlikely that such keys are exploitable in practice. So it would seem unlikely (though not impossible) that blowfish has been successfully attacked by NSA. So given a large enough keyspace, the NSA would have to be willing to dedicate a large number of CPUs/FPGAs to a brute force attack. Since blowfish supports keylenghts up to 448bits, such attacks could take a while even with NSA's extensive resources. [In this context, "a while" means effectively never.]
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.
tap voip.. bwahahahah (Score:2)
This has far-reaching implications (Score:5, Informative)
BTW, this same article is also available [com.com] over on news.com.com. Anyway, lemme quote:
"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."
Think about that one for a minute. How is a VoIP provider going to ensure that? There is only one way, turn off and disable all use of encryption in their VoIP network, unless the provider has access to the keys used.
Now think of IM networks, email servers, or just about any other Internet service. What are they going to do, outlaw all "non-sanctioned" client software using encryption? Are we gearing up for another Clipper Chip fiasco here?
FCC chairman Michael Powell has just come down on the side of VoIP providers [cnn.com] saying, in part:
"Rapidly expanding voice communications over the Internet should be protected from excessive government regulation and from being pigeonholed as simple phone service". He goes on to say "harm from misregulation of VoIP could take "decades to fix."
"You [can] create a very hostile regulatory environment for voice-over-IP providers in the United States," Powell said.
He added "there is nothing to stop" the companies from moving to other countries and setting up computer systems to serve U.S. customers.
Exactly. Welcome to the Internet age.
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.
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.
clear but theres more (Score:4, Interesting)
The most difficult (and dangerous) aspect is things like IM services with voice capacity. Actually, anyone two people with microphones and email could evade the police and FBI pretty easily by recording small sound files and emailing them (possibly even encrypting them to be sure). In such a case as this, where communications begin to forgo the use of any third-party to facilitate the information between two people, we will see a lot of hot debate.
When communications as distributed and "P2P" as this become more common place, many questions will be raised. But, we must look at how things would have to be implemented, before we can judge the rules that must be applied to them. Can we mandate that wiretaps must be available even for peer-to-peer exchange of communications? Would we then need to make requests directly to those being tapped, or those they are in contact with, stating they must, for a specified time, transmit all communications to the authoritive agencies for monitoring? Surely, no one would comply! Then, should the ISPs and backbone servers scan all packets for personal communications to or from individuals on a national "Tapped List"? But, what of all the data they would have to peak into to find these few, when most they have no right to touch, except to pass along?
We sail to rough waters. I pray for us all.
I see good and bad from this article (Score:5, Interesting)
--If there is a wiretap, they are only getting your conversation, and not ever piece of data your computer spits out. It looks like they would need a different warrant for that too.
--The tap would be located not at your ISP, but at your VOIP provider. This helps guarantee privacy for the people not specified in the warrant.
--This places VOIP on more of an equal footing as traditional phone services. If they are legally the same for what they have to provide the cops, they could then argue they are the same legally when it comes to their protection as common carriers.
The bad:
--The VOIP companies would have to re-wire their networks so that all conversations go through a tappable trunk line. That, or they would have to set up infrastructure to siphon off individuals phone calls to a 3rd location (which is what I would prefer. Let the VOIP provider pull a copy of the conversation off the trunk line instead of the cops). This means more $ needed in development and implementation.
--Requlation may (ok, probably will) stifle innovation. By regulating things like how a wiretap is to be done, it will be harder for open source and closed source products to work in multiple countries. This then leads to problems with interoperability between national networks.
Overall, I don't see this as too alarming.
Keeping Pace (Score:3, Insightful)
Missing the point. (Score:5, Interesting)
There will always be a screw-you-I'm-doing-this-the-OSS-way-with-crypto solution available. What does this solution cost? Well you might think it's free.
It isn't.
By adopting some OSS mechanism to communicate with whomever you choose, you impose a burden on the other party, namely, they have to install and have access to the same (or compatible) OSS VoIP software.
While this might be great for you and your hacker buddies, it won't help you call your parents, grandma, or your fiancee. It also won't help you call your doctor, lawyer, investment partner, stock broker or bank.
Wait, there's more going on here.
There are technical implication for the service providers. Most of the better designed VoIP protocols (like SIP [ietf.org], as an example) are all about establishing sessions. There is a location service somewhere that a user-agent (UA) (phone) can find, based on the number or URI that you call. This location service will either proxy your connection request to the other client, or it will redirect your user-agent to contact the other party directly. (Think HTTP 302 response code -- in fact -- SIP uses the same structure).
Once your UA has contacted the other party, some handshaking happens where you try to figure out what CODECs you will use to exchange audio, video, facsimile, IMs etc. Then end result is a collection of sessions directly between the user-agents that called one another.
Let me make that REALLY clear. Beyond the proxy / location service, the VSP (voice provider) is not in ANY way involved in the media flows. Why should it be? It doesn't care.
Enter CALEA requirements -- which are really poorly laid our I might add -- suddenly the VSP must carry the media and relay it to the other party and optionally duplicate each CODEC frame and send it to some black box (or red box [nbxsoftware.com] as the case may be).
This has serious consequences on bandwidth consumption for VSPs.
But they can just do this when there is a tap! (You object)
And I counter with the fact that such an arrangement violates the CALEA requirements that a party subject to monitoring cannot know that they are under surveillance. End result? All media MUST flow through a choke point from which it could be duplicated.
This has catastrophic consequences on the bandwidth a VSP can expect to need to meet their service levels.
This may or may not be a Good Thing. I think it is NOT a Good Thing. One thing is certain, this issue is a very Material Thing for VSPs.
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.
Mouahahaha (Score:4, Funny)
But I'll be damned if you're touching my carrier pigeons. I will feed them steroids and fit them with armor, if necessary, to keep you from interfering with my God-given right to private communications.
Nothing new (Score:4, Informative)
We were (and they still are) developing voice-over-ip infrastructure equipment (Succession as they call it) and it was -required- that we implement a way for feds to tap the lines before we could even consider rolling out and selling the product.
There are a lot of gov't requirements behind the scenes than you might realize (and people can't talk about)...
But... (Score:3, Insightful)
Outlawing cryptography (Score:4, Interesting)
At the same time, such a system (key escrow) will make use of cryptography across national borders impossible, since there is no state or supranational authority (such as the UN) that would be trusted by all national states to keep the keys needed for decryption.
Can you imagine France to use cryptography using keys known by the US authorities? Can you imagine the US using a system whose keys are entrusted to some U.N. authority? In the latter case, if the US would want to get a key in order to decrypt some domestic voip conversation, would the UN allow it?
In other words: if the US really wants to keep this possibility, the only option is to either outlaw cryptography totally, or to mandate a scheme that can only work domestically and outlawing all other forms of cryptography.
Either way, international ecommerce is killed.
I think that the US autorities, whether they like it or not, have to be prepared for a time where they can no longer tap communications at all, or they must accept a severe blow to the global (and thus national) economy.
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.
If I were making the laws... (Score:3, Funny)
"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].
I wonder... (Score:3, Funny)
how many did they intercept without court approval?
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:Law Enforcement and Technology (Score:5, Interesting)
On a side note, sometimes people have things to hide with good reason. A number of the founding fathers lived as long as they did because of Privacy. A number of blacks were better off because records could be kept from corrupt local governments. People have been persecuted by scientology for speaking out against it - sometimes privacy is the only safeguard. Can you honestly say you trust every single person who has access to your data (government or not) to act in your best interest, or at least the best interest of the country. Here's a hint: if the government can beat it, someone else can too.
I'll take my privacy, thank you very much. The only way to stop power from being abused is to not grant it in the first place. Our society is based on individual freedom - for example, the whole "guilty until proven innocent" thing. Our constitution is set up to let the guilty go free rather than imprison the innocent, should a conflict arise. Would placing the burden of proof on the defense (or eliminating the trial altogether) mean fewer criminals went free? Of course! Would more innocent mean be imprisoned? Of course.
Is it worth it? Hardly. From what I hear, though, if you like that sort of thing, Cuba is not hard to get into.
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.
Update... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Hyperbole++; (Score:3, Informative)
Oh yeah.
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. -- Fourth Amendment, Constitution of the United States
You should look at what "probable cause" used to mean, legally, in the Unite
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....
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:Money well spent. (Score:2)
Re:Calm Down (Score:2)
Re:The Real Wiretap Statistics 1968-2002 (Score:3, Insightful)
They forgot the most important one: Unauthorised Taps!
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,