Controversy rises over VoIP wiretap possibility
June 15, 2006 by Mike Wendland
With more people turning to VoIP Internet calls every day, concern is rising that the U.S. government will press its case to be able to listen in on them as they do with traditional landline calls in certain criminal cases and terror investigations.
A report from the Information Technology Association of America, a Silicon Valley based computer industry group, says such a plan would require the entire structure of the Internet to be reengineered, resulting in major security problems and new vulnerabilities to every computer that is online.
The report concludes wiretapping the Internet and VoIP calls would be unlikely to be politically and socially possible and that foreign governments simply wouldn’t go along with any plan pushed by the U.S. and that such a move would “be the destruction of American leadership in the world of telecommunications.”
Further, says the report, “this would cause enourmous and very serious national-security implications.”
What do you think, should law enforcement be able to tap into Internet calls like they do regular telephones
there are two quesitons here. First is the ability to keep track of call patterns. My family in Massachusetts calls me at my Vonage North Andover Virtual number, which forwards to my office number. If I don’t answer that, then it goes to my cellular phone as does all my other calls to the office. A paper trail will exist since Vonage has a billing record of all the transferring and the incoming call will show on my cellular bill as well.
The second issue of wiretapping is not that hard. Vonage phone calls do go to a server “somewhere” to make the connection. They also are made for billing purposes. vonage could automatically “conference” every call by default once the warrant is issued and validated.
The issue frankly is not that tough and because of the digital nature of voip phones, I would argue that they’re easier to tap. Just harder to locate.
Yes. Cell phones should be tapped, too. Technology is being used by terrorists and in this TIME OF WAR, we have to be able to thwart it at every turn!