The headline reads "FBI adds to wiretap wish list."
"A far-reaching proposal from the FBI, made public Friday, would require all broadband Internet providers, including cable modem and DSL companies, to rewire their networks to support easy wiretapping by police.
The FBI's request to the Federal Communications Commission aims to give police ready access to any form of Internet-based communications. If approved as drafted, the proposal could dramatically expand the scope of the agency's wiretap powers, raise costs for cable broadband companies and complicate Internet product development."
If you read the article, you'll find out that the Feds argue that terrorists could beat wiretaps by making phone calls over the internet. Mind you, they aren't saying that anyone is doing this, only that they could.
Viewed in isolation, this doesn't seem too bad; after all, we are all behind the war on terror, right? The problem is that they want to force all services to add guaranteed backdoors ahead of time. So much for due process. The other problem is that they have to follow this approach, since (AFAIK) there's no way to examine a packet and determine if it's part of a internet phone call, email, or someone downloading a music video. So they have to have access to everything.
Which includes encrypted sessions. In fact, they should target these, since someone obviously has something to hide. Again, the problem is that this law would guarantee a back door into every electronic sale over the internet, every PayPal money transfer, and every transaction you have with your bank.
Feeling safer yet?
Brought to you by the same folks who gave us Ruby Ridge, Waco, the TSA, the (completely futile) War on Drugs, racial profiling, and claims that smoking marijuana helps Al Quaeda.
I'm feeling much safer...
Comments (1)
When I'm feeling especially paranoid, I access the Internet through the JAP proxy, developed by a university research project over in Germany. This free (for the time being) service provides you with an anonymized and encrypted connection, and moreover, if enough people are using the service at once, thanks to packet mixing it becomes virtually impossible even for the providers of the service to determine which packets belong to which user.
The developers admit that the current release "does not protect you against an adversary who has the capability to observe all communication links on the Internet." And since last summer there's been some question whether, due to a legal tangle with the authorities, the full anonymity afforded by JAP has been compromised.
However the project is open-source, and in principle anyone could set up their own mix cascade.
Worth looking into, in these Ashcroft times.
Posted by Paul Burgess | March 15, 2004 1:00 PM
Posted on March 15, 2004 13:00