Saw an article recently about Voice over IP wiretapping.

It seems that the Feds have decided that cable modem and other broadband providers are covered by the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), the federal law that mandates backdoors in U.S. telephone networks, allowing the FBI to start listening to a target’s phone calls almost immediately after receiving court approval. The Justice Department has been lobbying for the use of CALEA concerning everything on the Internet for several years. Right now, they mostly rely on the cooperation of the ISPs or snoop the same way hackers do. They really want a legally-sanctioned way to keep an eye on everything we’re up to on the Internet.

Of course, that sounds like a bad idea to most of us. Doesn’t much matter whether we’re doing anything that could get us into legal hot water; we just don’t like the idea of Big Brother watching what we’re doing. But I advocate supporting this change. It’s actually good for us denizens of the Net.

Back in the beginning of the Internet, that Dark Age of the Web when the only transmission was via modem, I contended that since it was transmission via telephone, it should fall under the wiretapping regulations. Why should it matter that it wasn’t spoken words? It was going via the telephone, therefore it should be protected. Yes, I said “protected.” If the Feds get what they want and CALEA is enforced for all Internet traffic, we users will actually be in better shape. Right now, anything we do via the Net – e-mail, IM, VOIP, browsing, downloading – is fair game for snooping by anyone, government agencies included. But if CALEA is applied, no one can snoop into our Net doings without a court order. If they do, it’s wiretapping and that’s a federal offense. Sounds like an improvement to me. [Betty Law-Morgan]