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Time to tap the broadband

By Kevin Steel ⋅ November 28, 2005 ⋅  Email this post ⋅  Print this post ⋅ Post a comment

VoIP providers have 18 months to comply with new US FCC rules, raising the hackles of anti-censorship groups

When it comes to high technology, the world seems to advance by leaps and bounds every day. Funny, then, that the freedom of the users of that technology seems increasingly in danger of regressing. The latest setback for Internet freedom comes from the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, which last month gave cops the power to monitor everything that Americans do over the Internet: from reading e-mail, to monitoring website visits and file downloads, and eavesdropping on online conversations.

Because a growing number of North American Internet users are having conversations over the net–using Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP)–the FCC ruled that government officials should be able to tap Internet connections. An estimated three-million Americans use VoIP–which lets you talk cheaply over the Internet as if you were using a telephone–and 29,000 Canadians. But police argue that some of those users are criminals and terrorists, embracing the fast-growing technology because it isn’t vulnerable to the wiretap surveillance cops use on phones.

As of November, VoIP providers have 18 months to comply with new FCC rules by creating a back door for police to intercept Internet phone calls. Ottawa is currently considering implementing similar rules here. But in order to get at the phone calls, the police will have to intercept all the transmissions going to and from computers first– e-mails, website visits, et cetera–and sort it out afterward, says Robert Schell, director of network operations with Shift Communications, a Calgary-based VoIP provider.

That’s raised the hackles of anti-censorship groups, who see the move as a dangerous form of state control. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based group that lobbies for digital rights, and other like-minded groups have filed a petition with the U.S. Congress to have the FCC’s September ruling reviewed on the grounds that it ventures outside the agency’s authority. Congress specifically excluded the Internet from police surveillance abilities in the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act.

Rebecca Jeschke, media co-ordinator with EFF, notes that there’s plenty at stake for Internet users. The same back door created for cops to get inside your Internet might be used by others, too. “If you make it easier for law enforcement to tap VoIP and ISPs [Internet service providers], then it becomes much easier for hackers to get in,” says Jeschke. She adds, once government starts making rules about the way technologies are designed, innovation goes “out the door,” as companies are discouraged from developing and marketing Internet products with better security features. Last month, Internet-privacy guru Phil Zimmerman launched zFone, a software designed to securely encrypt VoIP transmissions, but it could one day be illegal. (Zimmerman’s run into this sort of thing before: when he developed a powerful e-mail encryption scheme in 1991, he was investigated by the government.)

The Internet is cherished by its fans specifically because it’s an unfettered forum for free expression, says Jeschke. “Any hint that people are trying to ferret out what’s going on or what people are saying, anonymously or not, has a highly chilling effect on speech.” So much of the technology being developed is designed to empower the individual. Maybe that’s what really has governments worried.

[This article appeared in the November 28, 2005 issue of the Western Standard.]