U.S. Wants to Make It Easier to Wiretap the Internet

updated by kickwit 2 years ago
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Federal law enforcement and national security are preparing to seek new legislation to “require all services that enable communications — including encrypted e-mail transmitters like BlackBerry, social networking Web sites like Facebook and software that allows direct “peer to peer” messaging like Skype — to be technically capable of complying if served with a wiretap order.” The professed goal is to wiretap “criminals” and “terrorists.” The Obama administration plans to submit the new legislation to lawmakers next year.

Readers may remember RIM’s negotiations with the Indian government over wiretaps. Readers may also be interested in reading about the NSA warrantless surveillance controversy, where the US wiretapped citizens without warrants, illegally.

kickwit updated by kickwit 2 years ago


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yoasif yoasif 2 years ago #

I’ve spent way too much time today reading forums about this issue, and there are a couple of misconceptions I really need to try to clear up, because they seem to be gaining some political currency.

Many people seem to think that this is “an extension of previously existing powers, e.g. for cell phone wiretaps” and that this is somehow already permissible, except not on the internet.

This is totally false.

As the NYT article says:

Communications services that encrypt messages must have a way to unscramble them.
Foreign-based providers that do business inside the United States must install a domestic office capable of performing intercepts.
Developers of software that enables peer-to-peer communication must redesign their service to allow interception.

This means that:

Private communications over something like Skype will now not be allowed. Skype must now be able to decrypt all communications that use the software. This may mean that P2P usage of Skype may be stopped (forcing all communications to go through a centralized Skype server) or that they must build in a second key to allow the government to decrypt data obtained from an ISP. This also means that software like OTR may soon be illegal, since that software “enables peer-to-peer communication” and I find it unlikely that a piece of software that is written purely for privacy is going to build in some way to allow the government to intercept conversations.

For whatever reason, people also seem to believe that cell phones do not have the ability to be encrypted, and that if the government issues a warrant on a cell phone, they get access to all sorts of nice conversations.

This is also false — encrypted cell phones exist, and are completely legal in the US. This proposed legislation would make something that is legal when using cell phones illegal when using the internet.

I may have more later, but this is what I have seen so far. It is horrifying to me how many people are promoting this as if it is “not such a big deal” because of their fundamental misunderstanding of the issues at play here.

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