p2pnet.net News:- ISPs, the Federal Communications Commission, equipment builders and broadband consumers are being set up to subsidize the FBI’s surveillance state, says the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation).

Its statement comes in response to an FBI demand that the FCC allow it to hack VoIP coms.

The FBI and its wire-taps are already famous – or infamous, depending on your point of view – and “Last month, the FBI, along with the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), filed a petition with the FCC to ask that the agency require ISPs to rewire networks and give the FBI the ability to tap packet-based voice communications,” says a TechNewsWorld story here.

“Experts tell TechNewsWorld that Internet-based telephone calls account for about 1 percent of all telephone calls made today.”

The FBI petition wants the government create a regulatory process under which new communications protocols, applications or services must be reviewed and approved by the FBI before they can be deployed, the story says, continuing:

“The FBI also seeks to amend the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), adopted 10 years ago to bolster tapping of digital telephone networks.”

But, says EFF lawyer Lee Tien, the FBI’s plan would turn the FCC into the “Federal Bureau of Innovation Control”.

And, “The FBI has made it clear that they don’t want to understand how the Internet is fundamentally different from the public phone service,” says EFF staff technologist Chris Palmer.

“The rapid innovation and open access that makes the Internet great will be severely hampered if creators have to get past the FCC and FBI every time they want to make an innovative product.”

The EFF today submitted comments to the FCC opposing an FBI proposal to extend the decade-old telephone surveillance law to the Internet.

“The Communication Assistance for Law Enforcement Act of 1994 (CALEA) forced telecommunications carriers like your phone company to build convenient wiretap features into their networks,” it says. “Congress never intended CALEA’s requirements to reach the Internet, but now the FBI is demanding that broadband ISPs build ‘wiretappability’ into their equipment too.”

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 13th, 2004 at 8:21 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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