August 6th, 2005
New FCC Ruling Forces ISPs and VoIP Services to Open Up to Wiretapping
By David Johnston
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews
The FCC announced today that it is going to require broadband ISPs and VoIP providers to open up their networks so that they can be more easily tapped into and monitored. The release (found here) states that “certain broadband and interconnected voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services must be prepared to support law enforcement wiretaps”. Currently this initiative is limited to broadband users and VoIP networks that are capable of making calls to and from the traditional phone system (this would include Skype!).
Our Take: While I can see that there are certainly security benefits for the government to be able to tap someone’s internet connection, I hope that this won’t make it easier for unauthorized hackers to intercept data going over my internet connection. I also wonder how effective this would be in reality since it wouldn’t be too hard to use something like PGP to encrypt internet communications via Email. I wonder how fast the government would be able to crack these forms of encryption, because terrorists would almost certainly start employing them.
Source: Electronic Frontier Foundation
Rob says:
“I hope that this won’t make it easier for unauthorized hackers to intercept data going over my internet connection”
– I doubt it. If the FBI were smart, they’d be intercepting data on the server-side rather than the client-side. It’s much more transparent that way.
“because terrorists would almost certainly start employing them.”
– Yea, I’ve wondered for a while how long it’ll be before non-commercial and/or non-governmental data encryption is outlawed. After all, if you’ve got nothing to hide…
August 6th, 2005 at 4:23 pm
Lockergnome's Tech News Watch says:
Alert: New FCC Ruling Forces ISPs and VoIP Services to Open Up to Wiretapping
By David Johnston, Contributing Writer, RealTechNews The FCC announced today that it is going to require broadband ISPs and VoIP providers to open up their networks so that they can be more easily tapped into and monitored. The release states that “ce…
August 6th, 2005 at 6:49 pm
Mr Ned says:
“I wonder how fast the government would be able to crack these forms of encryption, because terrorists would almost certainly start employing them.”
Who says that they are using it to go after real terrorists?
August 6th, 2005 at 6:54 pm
Will says:
How effective this would be in reality since it wouldn’t be too hard to use something like PGP to encrypt internet communications via Email. ?
January 19th, 2006 at 9:57 am