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Re: [Fwd: [IP] Feds: VoIP a potential haven for terrorists]

  • From: John Curran
  • Date: Fri Jun 18 17:30:24 2004

At 3:44 PM -0400 6/18/04, Daniel Golding wrote:
>
>There are three schools of thought here.
>
>One is that the VoIP should not be wiretapped at all. This seems a little
>unrealistic considering that we allow other calls to be tapped. The second
>school is that VoIP calls should be made no easier or harder to tap than the
>technology itself warrants through its natural evolution. The FBI or
>whomever would just have to learn how to work with it as it evolves. The
>third school of thought is that all VoIP boxes should come with a red rj45
>that says "FBI use only" and a big red button to start the data flowing to
>said jack.

There another axis of the conversation going on, and that is with
respect to the scope of voice technologies that require support...
One camp believes that all voice communication must provide
CALEA and the other believes that just those voice services which
provide interconnection to/from the PSTN should need compliance.
The latter position is far easier to implement and corresponds to
today's capabilities.  Under the more generous definition of any
voice communication, there's a huge realm of possible applications
that might need to be intercepted including IM services, Skype,
web chat support protocols, and even audio-enabled chats that
are embedded in games.

Someone's going to make a killing in stateful packet detection at
the metro POP level...

/John