FCC Rules VoIP Must Be Tappable
Found on Slashdot on Wednesday, 04 August 2004
"The FCC has unanimously approved the U.S. Justice Department's bid to expand CALEA to broadband and VoIP networks, according to reports from SecurityFocus and News.com. This means, following a mandatory public comment period, service providers will have to wire their networks for easy law enforcement surveillance, the way phone companies do now. The feds have wanted this for a long time." Ebon Praetor adds a link to Reuters' version, writing "In addition, the FCC has decided that the push-to-talk, or walkie-talkie, functions available on phones from Nextel should also be subject to the same tapping regulations that regular phones are."
This makes me wonder why they put so much effort into pushing new wiretapping laws through. All it takes is a PGP encrypted email and the Feds stay out. Or perhaps they already have a backdoor to that...