Feds: VoIP a potential haven for terrorists

Found on CNet News on Wednesday, 16 June 2004
Browse Legal-Issues

The U.S. Department of Justice on Wednesday lashed out at Internet telephony, saying the fast-growing technology could foster "drug trafficking, organized crime and terrorism."

Laura Parsky, a deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department, told a Senate panel that law enforcement bodies are deeply worried about their ability to wiretap conversations that use voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services.

Police been able to conduct Internet wiretaps for at least a decade, and the FBI's controversial Carnivore (also called DCS1000) system was designed to facilitate online surveillance. But Parsky said that discerning "what the specific (VoIP) protocols are and how law enforcement can extract just the specific information" are difficult problems that could be solved by Congress requiring all VoIP providers to build in backdoors for police surveillance.

Oh sure. And freely available weapons are no problem. And nobody seems to care about encrypted emails. Time for open source solutions where users can remove potential backdoors from the source.