I'd bet that Thomas is more familiar with the details of VoIP protocols than I am. But I would venture two points: (1) Vonage has told me in the past that they have not received a wiretap order but could comply if they did. (2) The Feds have said they're prepared to outlaw certain products that doesn't provide ready wiretap access, period. Take a look at FCC Chairman Kevin Martin's statement on Friday: http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-260434A2.pdf "I am committed to ensuring that these providers take all necessary actions to incorporate surveillance capabilities into their networks in a timely fashion. To this end, the Commission intends to continue working closely with industry representatives, equipment manufacturers, and law enforcement officials to address and overcome any challenges that stand in the way of effective lawful electronic surveillance." Can anyone clear this up? -Declan PS: Previous Politech message: http://www.politechbot.com/2005/08/08/schizo-fcc-deregulates/ -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: [Politech] Weekly column: Schizo FCC deregulates DSL, but regulates Net-wiretapping [priv] Date: Mon, 08 Aug 2005 11:04:11 -0500 From: Thomas Junker To: Declan McCullagh <declan@private> PLEASE OMIT MY EMAIL ADDRESS. On 8 Aug 2005 at 11:04, Declan McCullagh wrote: > The text of the FCC's CALEA order is not yet public, but early signs > are worrisome. The FCC's two-page summary says that voice over > Internet Protocol (VoIP) providers like Vonage that mimic traditional > phone service must rewire their networks to be easily wiretappable. Essentially can't be done because VoIP is peer to peer after call setup. Pen register could be done via the servers that handle call setup, but voice capture, NFW. Of course they could require a back door into the consumer's VoIP box and duplicative voice streams to be sent to a law enforcement server... surely no one would notice that their box and network are sending another 90 kbps somewhere... oh, wait! And what about people and companies who run their own Asterisk VoIP PBXs? Calls that take place within the universe of SIP and related VoIP units known to a PBX never touch a carrier's server for call setup. It's one thing for gummint to tell telcos and network providers to do onerous, expensive, inefficient and vulernable things to capture voice or network traffic, it's another thing entirely to try to tell people to do things that can't be done due to the decentralized nature of things like VoIP. Regards, Thomas Junker [email withheld to frustrate harvesters] _______________________________________________ Politech mailing list Archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Moderated by Declan McCullagh (http://www.mccullagh.org/)
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