FCC Affirms VoIP Must Allow Snooping

MarsGov writes "The FCC released an order yesterday that requires all broadband providers and all "interconnected" VoIP providers to implement CALEA — in other words, law enforcement can snoop on your online conversations, both voice and text. While this is no surprise, it makes encryption for VoIP even more urgent."

Voice Scramblers?

[MBCook]

I was under the impression that it was illegal in the US to use voice scramblers to mask your telephone calls.

If they can tap the VOIP calls, wouldn't encrypting them be the equivalent of voice scramblers and thus illegal?

Re:There's encryption ......

[foreverdisillusioned]

No one uses plain DES anymore; it was broken decades ago. 3DES is fairly secure, but slow as hell. No point in using i3DES except maybe for legacy support. AES is probably good enough to guard against casual (i.e. mass) surveillence, though personally I would go wth Blowfish or Twofish due to faster large-key performance and the fact AES is likely to be cracked first by virtue of the fact that it's a government standard now and people on both sides of the fence will be trying like mad to crack it (either to gain an advantage or to prove it can withstand attack X.)

The key word...

[chill]

...is "connected". For the people whom I talk to the most -- family and some cyber-aware friends -- strong encryption on top of VoIP is the way I will go. Don't leave the Internet for the traditional POTS world and the CALEA doesn't apply.

http://www.philzimmermann.com/EN/zfone/index.html [philzimmermann.com]

Thank you (again), Phil.

  -Charles

By buying senators.

[tepples]

How do you get a patent on a mathematical formula?

Software patents are worded such that the patent doesn't cover but 1. a computer with memory that executes the formula and 2. the method of communicating X, Y, or Z using the formula. Patenting a generic computer with memory preloaded a specific way is possible by buying senators.

Re:CLAEA for VOIP isn't "trivial"

[Fatal67]

This is a death knell for companies that are just software based and don't actually provide the network used by their customers. Unless they have every call route through their servers (every packet), they can't meet CALEA requirements.

Of course, they could just pay the phone and cable companies to do this service for them. Mightily amusing.

How would this work?

[jamesh]

Properly implemented, SIP (common VoIP protocol) works like this:
A='A Party' - the person making the call
B='B Party' - the person receiving the call
P='Proxy' - the VoIP provider

A and B register with P.
A makes a call to B:
. A requests P that it be put through to B
. P contacts B, B's phone rings
. B answers
. P lets A know B's details
. P lets B know A's details
. A and B exchange voice traffic directly, without involving P

This allows latency to remain low when, say, A and B are in Australia and P is on the other side of the world.

To perform a successful wire tap in this scenario, the FCC would need to intercept the data at multiple points, possibly in separate countries.

Alternatively, P can tell A and B that there is too much firewalling in place and that all voice traffic must go via P, but by doing this they are giving the game away... it would be easily detectable by A and or B if they were smart enough to know what was going on.

Thomas Jefferson with a cell phone would have done

[mrraven]

Dumbass, if the American revolution were taking place today you can be sure Thomas Jefferson would have a cell phone and a laptop and the 4th amendment would be written in such way as to keep government snoops OUT of those devices.
The INTENT of the 4th amendment is to keep the government out of our "houses, papers, and effects" in the 21st century that means electronic files and phone conversations. YOU may want your rights whittled down to bite sized chunks to be swallowed by the leviathan government, not all of us are sanguine for such a fate.

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[account_deleted]

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Re:Hard to do encryption commercial services

[anagama]

I have vonage. Faxes work fine. In 4 months of service, I had only one day with difficulty (solved by temporarily setting my fax to "overseas" mode). I'm not a heavy fax user, but it is a steady 2-5 (combined in/out) per weekday.