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Can spies eavesdrop on your phone calls over the Internet?
Loopholes in the Internet
With the advent of technology comes the availability of Internet phone calls
where anybody can easily communicate with someone else halfway round the world,
for free. As in any situation, a new product brings with it new loopholes and
fresh headaches for the governing authorities. For the FBI, traditional methods
which were used for wire-tapping phone calls are no longer applicable in the
realm of phone calls made over the Internet. This forms a mounting security
concern as phone calls made by criminals and terrorists have a high probability
of going unnoticed and untapped.
What the FBI is trying to do
With this, the FBI is trying to get regulatory authorities to make it a prerequisite
for phone companies to incorporate surveillance capabilities into phones utilizing
VoIP technology. However, according to Vonage a broadband phone company, due
to the nature of VoIP technology, this may be difficult or close to impossible.
This occurs because differing from traditional telephones, Internet calls utilizes
data packets to transmit data over phone lines, therefore requiring voice to
be broken down first before being sent out and then reassembled again when it
reaches the target destination. The only way for Vonage to cooperate with the
FBI is to make a copy of a conversation and stream it to the FBI. However, this
violates a current regulation that states that government agents can listen
in on phone calls only in real time.
Privacy Issues
Time Warner on the other hand, who owns the underlying network of routers and
switches that form the core infrastructure used to transport VoIP, has the ability
to provide the FBI access to its switches and routers and allow them to tap
into the conversations from that point. However, although technically possible,
this opens up another door of challenges for the FBI to tackle. For example,
voice data transferred over VoIP can be encrypted in ways the FBI cannot tackle.
Another issue would be that given the ability to tap onto the underlying network,
the FBI is also able to have access to other data such as emails, which contradicts
with privacy issues.
Regulations to control Internet calls
With this, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is working on regulations
to control call traffic over the Internet. However, there is another issue on
who is to bear for the high costs required for Internet call surveillance. Also,
there is also the issue of regulations on companies like Skype, which is based
in Luxemburg, and thus is not bound by US regulations.
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