It appears that the new FCC rules to allow a backdoor for wiretapping is not going to happen without a fight. Declan McCullagh reports that The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) said Wednesday that it plans to file suit against the new federal rule. The only thing that Declan may have gotten slightly wrong is this part in bold where he only refers to SkypeOut:
the Federal Communications Commission said that broadband providers and Internet phone companies that link to the public telephone network (Vonage, Packet 8, SkypeOut) must rewire their networks to readily accommodate police wiretaps. If they don't comply, they must shut down.
As I have recently stated here and here, it appears that not only is SkypeOut applicable to this new FCC wiretapping rules, but plain-ole' Skype (Skype-to-Skype) calls fall under the FCC wiretap guidelines as well.
Note: The EFF is suing based on the FCC's intention to wiretap ALL forms of VoIP comminication, including IP-to-IP calls. See EFF's site for details
From the FCC order, the bold is for emphasis:
To be clear, a service offering is “interconnected VoIP” if it offers the capability for users to receive calls from and terminate calls to the PSTN; the offering is covered by CALEA for all VoIP communications, even those that do not involve the PSTN. Furthermore, the offering is covered regardless of how the interconnected VoIP provider facilitates access to and from the PSTN, whether directly or by making arrangements with a third party.
Thus, right now, GoogleTalk for example would not fall under the FCC jurisdiction to be wiretappble since they don't currently offer PSTN termination. However, since Skype does offer PSTN termination via SkypeOut, ALL of their services MUST also be wiretappable, including
even IP-to-IP calls using the Skype client that never touch the PSTN.
This is major news that I have been pointing to for the past couple of days. I expect this from the slow-moving traditional media, but how did the VoIP blogosphere miss this? If I am mistaken, post a comment with a link to others who have written about this.
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Actually, the EFF does know about the IP-to-IP requirement. From their news page:
"According to the FCC, all VoIP communications on a given service must be wiretap-ready if the VoIP service offers the capability for users to connect calls with the public switched telephone network (PSTN), even those communications that do not involve the PSTN."
Actually, the EFF does know about how it affects IP-to-IP calls:
http://www.eff.org/news/archives/2005_09.php#004011
"According to the FCC, all VoIP communications on a given service must be wiretap-ready if the VoIP service offers the capability for users to connect calls with the public switched telephone network (PSTN), even those communications that do not involve the PSTN."
BTW, comment submission is really messed up lately... Sits forever, gives an error, but (sometimes) posts the comment anyways. This last comment it first told me I had the wrong "captcha" key (and maybe posted it); the second time it gave me a 1-line internal error about failing while rebuilding the page. One of these two times (the first I think) it posted, plus an earlier one that just never appeared to get anywhere.
This may be why few people are commenting....
I too realized the EFF came to the conclusion that IP-to-IP was covered by CALEA as well. I checked out the EFF web page to confirm what exactly they were suing for. I guess I must have been unclear in my post, but I was only mildly scolding Declan for only mentioning SkypeOut. I knew full-well that the EFF was suing based on all IP-to-IP calls, but I should have mentioned that fact.
I like these two quotes from the EFF website:
Acknowledging that the FCC is reaching beyond Congress's intention by expanding CALEA to the Internet, FCC Commissioner Michael J. Copps admitted that "[the] statute is undeniably stretched," and FCC Commissioner Kathleen Q. Abernathy issued a plea that Congress revisit its decision to exempt the Internet, stating the "application of CALEA to these new services could be stymied for years" by litigation.
"The FCC's overreach is an attempt to overrule Congress's decision to exclude 'information services,'" said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Lee Tien. "By mandating backdoors in any service that has the capability to replace functions provided by a telephone, the FCC has stretched the statute to the breaking point."
But thanks for the clarification, maybe I'll edit the post.
GOOD WORK,let me THINK THINK^_^
I UNKOWNLY TRIED TO SELL A RESTRICTED ITEM ON EBAY AND THEN HAD MY VOIP LINE TAPPED ! AND I FOUND OUT THAT IT IS NOT POSSIBLE TO WIRE TAP YOUR VOIP LINE WITHOUT COMPLETELY DESTROYING THE INTEGRITY OF YOUR CALL ! SO MUCH ,THAT IT IS OBVIOUS THAT SOMEONE IS INTERCEPTING YOUR CALL, SO MUCH FOR TAPPING VOIP CALLS !