Big Brother Wants Into VoIP At Any Cost

wallaby fly-half writes "An amendment to the CALEA law would make it easier for the government to monitor calls made over VoIP and even temporarily store some packet traffic. Ars Technica reports that the 'bill will put the technology in place to buffer packet streams, and places the job of filtering those streams under government control. We know from the NSA warrantless wiretapping program that the government is not limiting itself to access to under court orders, and the CALEA bill must be considered in light of the capacity it generates.'"

Oke...

[ackthpt]

Raise your hand if you thought VoIP was a really neat idea when it first came out.

Now raise your hand if you still think it is.

Granted it's not really too different from recording Voice, but now you could expect yourself to be extraordinarily rendered if you choose to encrypt your converstations because you have the gall to actually believe the government has no right to recording and storing your conversations, Dub's dirty tricks or not.

Hell, they'll probably outlaw encrypting your own phone calls, next, because (the flag waving) it's (an eagle poses rampant) in (strains of The Star Bangled Banner) the (In God We Trust) best(the blue angels fly overhead) interests (cascading images of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, etc.) of (Betsy Ross adds another star to her handicraft) America (fanfare of fife and drum) and everybody knows the real patriots don't question any of this.

"sir, you served potential enemies of uh-merika with strong encryption" and we can't be having that.

Ebay constantly in hot water would probably love to score some points with Washington, they're probably already serving tea and crumpets with the NSA right now, along with a side order of Skype backdoors.

dangerous times call for dangerous laws

The New Bolshevism

[(1+-sqrt(5))*(2**-1)]

From TFA:

We know from the NSA warrantless wiretapping program that the government is not limiting itself to access to under court orders, and the CALEA bill must be considered in light of the capacity it generates. [...] Most of the wiretaps—81 percent—dealt with drug crimes. Second on the list was racketeering. Homicide came third. Gambling was fourth. What's missing here? Terrorism.

We can safely assume that the lion's share of our empire's surveillance, terrorism, goes unreported; and that the most insidious state must hide from its citizens.

Haven't we learned any lessons from the hideous Bolsheviks [antiwar.com]?*

____________________
* Peter Holquist, "'Information Is the Alpha and Omega of Our Work': Bolshevik Surveillance in Its Pan-European Context," Journal of Modern History, 69: 3 (September 1997), pp. 415-450.

For values of temporarily...

[Tackhead]

An amendment to the CALEA law would make it easier for the government to monitor calls made over VoIP and even temporarily store some packet traffic.

...for values of "temporarily" approaching the heat death of the Universe. For legal precedent, see any case regarding DMCA and/or copyright extension.

Encryption?

[HugePedlar]

I assume VOIP can be encrypted just like anything else. So once again this will do nothing towards preventing terrorism, but everything to alienate The People.

Re:Oke...

[symbolic]

but now you could expect yourself to be extraordinarily rendered if you choose to encrypt your converstations because you have the gall to actually believe the government has no right to recording and storing your conversations, Dub's dirty tricks or not.

That's only until a certain critical mass starts to understand the NEED to do this, and follow through. Yes, they can make examples out of a few people and try to scare everyone away from the idea, but that's no more effective than temporarily manning a speed trap to catch people exceeding the limit. Given the current government's quenchless thirst for things that are none of its business, I wholeheartedly support the use of encryption. PGP, TrueCrypt, and whatever else will get the job done.

Re:Oke...

[russ1337]

Its fantastic that the government listens to what you say and limits what you read [slashdot.org]. Its called freedom people!

If your not with us your with the terrorists or must have something to hide. Yes we wiretap your calls, log all your intertet traffic, and look over your shoulder, but it is to protect you!

You've got to be fucking kidding. Its tyranny.

Re:Strange...

[Anonymous Coward]

The biggest downside is that in just two short years, George Bush will no longer be president and we won't get to hear such cerebral commentaries any longer.

Right. In two short years, Hillary will be taking her turn with all of the expanded executive powers that Dubya is indulging in. Then it'll be your turn to stammer, "Uh, hey, wait a minute, guys, this executive-dictatorship thing isn't so cool."

The worm will turn. It always does.

Power to the People

[Doc Ruby]

It's a lot more likely that millions of people will encrypt our VoIP streams than that we will all scramble our POTS conversations.

Where's our Java applet with SIP over SSL?

Re:Encryption?

[TCM]

I believe in AES being secure.

I don't believe in AES in a closed app being secure.

Why should VOIP be any different?

[Weaselmancer]

Big brother is already into my credit card records, phone call records, credit and purchase history and library records. Why would anyone think VOIP would get a break?

Punishing the Innocent

[pashdown]

More punishment for Americans who obey the law. As if a criminal would be stupid enough to not use private encryption or alternate communication channels that the government didn't have a listening ear to. Why don't they go all the way and pass an amendment to the constitution that prevents citizens from protecting themselves from government monitoring? Isn't that what they really want?

Re:Strange...

[Roody Blashes]

I enjoy the fact that Bush's antics have gotten so severely anti-American that people like you don't even bother to try and defend them anymore, you just try and mock anybody who chastises him and hope people will automatically assume you're right....

Re:Avoid the Risk--Use Zfone

[Anonymous Coward]

lets hope not, even if it were the prime minister and not the king i bet he couldn't break the encryption on anonet [anonet.org] yes its time for these networks, call them what you like but they guarantee freedom for all.

Re:Right to Remain Silent

[rolfwind]

This is not just the Republicans but the Democrats are interested in the exact same thing. They are not really different in issues such as these. Washington (George) warned us away from Political Parties in his farewell address as President.

The people who have most interest in circumventing the Constition are inevitably the people who think they are the least affected by said circumventions, i.e. career Politicians and career powerful bureacrats (FBI's Hoover comes to mind). We prevented future Hoovers by limiting the FBI's Directors allowed term (10 years I think). We would do well to limit the terms of Senators and Representatives.

It would probably be a good step at reclaiming our democracy as well. Perhaps it will also cut down on porkbarrel spending, as a lot of Porkbarrel spending right now is directed at those who've been in the longest (Robert Byrd) because they've built up the most influence and chairmanships, etcetera.

As always, vote independent.

Re:Oke...

[Philip K Dickhead]

This America thing was a good idea - but I think we learned a lot building this one. Why don't we go back, and start it over again?

Re:That's One Idea, Here's A Better One

[rewt66]

You got modded flamebait, and I think rightly so, but I think you deserved a real reply anyway.

First, dumping Israel will not protect us from terrorists. You must remember that al-Qaeda attacked Saudi Arabia, even though Saudi Arabis is the guardian of the Islamic holy cities. But they weren't idealogically pure enough, they crossed one of al-Qaeda's lines, and they got hit anyway. So if we were to totally stop supporting Israel, would that buy us protection from terrorist attacks? No. There would be some other issue - we were still selling products to Israel, or buying from them, or something. Are you prepared to write a blank check of concessions to every set of idiots that are willing to use violence to accomplish their goals?

Second: Israeli terrorism??? Hello?

Imagine that the Mexicans, instead of just flooding across our borders in insane numbers, were firing homemade rockets into downtown San Diego and El Paso. Imagine that this had been going on for two years. And imagine that the people doing this (the Zapatistas, say) won the next Mexican presidential election. Now they're the Mexican government. Then they fire some more rockets. Since they're the government, that's now an act of war.

So we go after them. After all, enough is enough. And, though we try to avoid it, there are inevitably civilian casualties. Does that make us terrorists? Or are the terrorists the people who were firing rockets into our cities for two years, deliberately targeting civilians?

Third: Enabling Israel to keep going after the people who are targeting their civilians is a good thing. There cannot be peace while Hezbollah and Hamas continue firing missiles into Israel, and neither of them seem willing to stop, ever. So they have to be stopped. That means that Israel is doing the right thing. But sometimes doing the right thing - or helping someone else to do the right thing - upsets people who are doing the wrong thing. We should help them do the right thing anyway.

Re:Right to Remain Silent

[Doc Ruby]

Tell me how this amendment, proposed by Republican Congressmembers, produced by the Bush FBI and DoJ to govern Bush's FCC, tells us anything about Democrats? You know, the minority party that has little power under the Republican lockstep government?

Your term limits are decent interventions, but of course they're obviously needed now that Republicans, not Democrats, have forced the issue. As it was Nixon's Republican Executive which forced the Hoover issue in the FBI, and how Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK) is forcing the incumbent pork with his bridge to nowhere.

As always vote independently. But until Party rackets no longer game the system, voting "independent" is nearly impossible. In the meantime, vote for politicians who will govern a sustainable system, not ransack it until it drowns in a bathtub.

Raise Hand Here

[tashanna]

Do you think I'm suddenly going to freak out on VOIP because the US government might start listening in on my calls? I'm actually suprised that they're not already (they seem twitchy about that stuff right now), though this may be a political version of "it's easier to ask forgiveness than permission". Fundamentally, I don't care how my voice gets from point A to point B, but I'm in favor of doing it as cheap as possible. I like the idea of a world where they run one cable (or no cables, woohoo) to my house and all the information flows over it. The tinfoil hat wearers can roll their own VOIP [asterisk.org] for talking to whomever they want to talk to and encrypt it out the wazoo. If they're paranoid enough, they can get multiple wired and wireless connections, split up the packets across them all, and have a grand time of it. As best I can tell, VOIP was never about avoiding the government, it was about talking on the cheap using resources already available.

Now, if they come for my encryption, they'll have to pry it from my cold, dead connection

- Tash
Vrrooommm... [tashcorp.net]

The real reason

[drooling-dog]

Pretty much everybody without his/her head up his/her ass knows that "fighting terrorism" has very little to do with this.

But then, spying on and harrassing political opponents a la Nixon may not be the main motivation behind it, either.

The BIG concern within the Bush Administration is the threat from people inside of it. They need their own people to know that if they divulge any embarrassing or incriminating information, even anonymously, that they will be tracked down and punished. The war is against potential whistleblowers.

Ever wonder why you never hear interviews with anybody who knew Dubya back in his wild days before he became governor of Texas? Every college friend of every other president had stories to tell, some positive and some not, but not so with George II. Why is this? Well, pretty much everybody with an embarrassing story to tell about cocaine or girls or his desertion from the National Guard now has a cushy high-level job in the government or the energy industry. Better jobs with more power than they'd ever dreamed they'd have, and jobs they're not going to jeopardize by telling stories.

That's how you go from being a horse show official to being head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency with zero experience. Anybody who works in Washington knows there's hundreds - maybe thousands - of 'em.

Without the extensive eavesdropping powers Bush claims, these people would be free to contact reporters or blog information anonymously. By advertising these "powers" via carefully planned "leaks", Karl Rove is letting insiders know that they're taking a big risk if they spill any beans.

And you can bet they'll know who I am as soon as I hit the "Submit" button...

Re:That's One Idea, Here's A Better One

[the Atomic Rabbit]

So we go after them. After all, enough is enough. And, though we try to avoid it, there are inevitably civilian casualties. Does that make us terrorists?

The trouble is that Israel doesn't actually try to avoid civillian casualties. Observe their deliberate targeting of civillian infrastructure and housing districts (not to mention UN outposts). An even clearer example is their longstanding policy of collective punishment in Palestine. That can legitimately be labelled government-sponsored terrorism.

Re:Oke...

[voice_of_all_reason]

I think the Declaration of Independence strongly hinted that the founding fathers were aware government is an endless cycle of foundation -> golden age -> decline -> dark age. That whole bit about "whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it"

Warranted VoIP logging and CALEA

[Archon_de_Gaul]

As the Network Administrator for an ISP that has customers who use VoIP, I have had to read, understand and plan for CALEA. I can tell you: if the men in black show up without a warrant, they will not get access to customer data. If they come bearing a warrant, I will tap a single stream of data from a single customer, so no other customer data will be included. There is no need to fear conspiracy from responsible ISPs. There's no 'Carnivore' sitting in our data centers, you simply record all the in-out data for that specific site. It's very easy to do and very easy to ensure cleanliness of the output. As long as the 'onus' isn't on us, the ISP, to 'decode' VoIP or VPN data, I don't mind at all. But a warrant will be required.

Sad day?

[nude-fox]

its a sad day when your average citazens biggest threat is its own government

Re:Oke...

[Firehed]

Well, yes, if by 'hinted' you mean 'said outright':

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

- DoI, emphasis obviously mine (note 'when' not 'if')

I wouldn't try using that argument in court against your domestic terrorism and/or high treason charges, but that doesn't change the fact that The Founding Fathers Told You To Do It. Hell, that's WHY we have the right to bear arms - not for shooting each other, but for the purpose of defending ourself from and overthrowing corrupt governments.

Re:Oke...

[takeya]

Well I hate living in this decline and I'll hate spending the rest of my life in the dark ages.

Are there any countries out there experiencing a golden age? Or is the world so intertwined they all go together..

Re:Encryption?

[Anonymous Coward]

They don't break the encryption, the get the information the low-tech way.

In case you've forgotten the Scarfo case, Nicodemo Scarfo was a fairly tech savvy guy who kept records of some mafia operations. The FBI snuck into his house and cloned his hard to to scan it for info. But it was in an encrypted partition and they couldn't get at it.

So they snuck back into his house and stuck a hardware keystroke logger on the back of his PC, and came back and collected it a week later. Problem solved!

In the not-distant future it will be like Chile under pinochet: they'll stick a cattle-prod up your ass and offer to turn it off if you tell them the password. Then they may or may not actually turn it off.

NO..this is the problem..

[Anonymous Coward]

>And imagine that the people doing this (the Zapatistas, say) won the next Mexican presidential >election. Now they're the Mexican government. Then they fire some more rockets. Since they're the >government, that's now an act of war.

I believe the problem at the root of all this is that Israel is occupying Palestine (the place that was there before Israel was created). Of course the people who were there before, and got ejected from their land..don't like it, and want their land back..

So the above example would be like if the US took over all of Mexico and kicked out most of the mexicans who are now living there who are now refuged in Guatamala, firing rockets once in a while, so they can get their land back..

That is the situation really.

The bias in the news doesn't help much either..

ie. when Israelis bomb an arab residential area full of families & kids it reads
"Army today destroyed a terrorist outpost in Gaza killing 3 militants"

while when the arabs do the same thing to Israel, it reads
"terrorists attack residential area, 5 families and 6 children killed"

And, when the Israeli's do a 'kidnapping' of someone from the arab side, it reads
"Arab militants were detained and are being held today after a raid into a militant stronghold" (actually, indefinately, there are like 1000 arabs or more "kidnapped" and in Israeli jails)

And we worry about Iran "supporting" Hezbolla... and who is supporting Israel, and giving them their whole army for free, and all their bombs for free, and paying a very big hunk of their national budget so they can just go and terrorize everyone living around them? We are..the USA, with our tax dollars... shheeeh... no wonder we got 9/11... wake up people, and stop believing the stuff you see on CNN..

Go see
http://www.aljazeera.net/ [aljazeera.net] (see what non pro-Israeli news bias looks like..this is the arab CNN,
  press 'English' for English)

http://www.ifamericansknew.org/history/origin.html [ifamericansknew.org]

All the 9/11, "war on terror".., crazy NSA and domestic spying stuff now happening in the is a direct result of *this* issue...so best to learn what is at the root of it all... its the above..

Re:That's One Idea, Here's A Better One

[Tack]

The trouble is that Israel doesn't actually try to avoid civillian casualties.

Really? [alertnet.org]

Israel believes their enemy has taken base in civilian locations. Perhaps Israel should just toss in the towel? "We'd like to bomb our enemies but, crap, they're living in grandma's basement. Guess we concede." Instead, they seem to be making an effort to tell civilians to get the hell out of dodge because the bombs will soon be dropping.

Yeah, it sure sucks for the families in Lebanon who likely don't really have anywhere else to go. Innocents are dying on both sides of the border and it's terrible. But it's pretty bold -- and, from what I've seen at least, wrong -- to say that Israel "doesn't actually try to avoid civilian casualties."