Escrow services voip

'NET INSIDER

A few weeks ago I wrote about the directions that U.S. law enforcement seemed to be taking when considering wiretapping VoIP and other Internetbased services, (see "Blindly looking in the wrong place," www.nwfusion.com, DocFinder: 1231). We now know almost what the U.S. law enforcement community wants, and some of its desires make more sense than others.

The U.S. Department of Justice, Drug Enforcement Administration and the Federal Bureau of Investigation sent a "Joint petition for Expedited Rulemaking" to the FCC on March 10. Two days later, the FCC published an RFC on the petition, with comments due by April 12 (see DocFinder: 1232). Conspiracy theorists might wonder why the FCC's RFC and the law enforcement request are so hard to find on the FCC Web site. (They're not on the first page, where one would expect to find issues of this importance, and I never found a copy of the law enforcement petition on the FCC site nor a pointer to the petition in the FCC RFC.) Basically, the law enforcement request is to be able to wiretap the Internet and services running over it. Law enforcement has asked the FCC to declare that ISPs, including broadband access providers such as cable and DSL companies, and providers of switched services, including VoIP and instant messaging, are subject to the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALFJV). The law enforcement request uses the threat of "criminals, terrorists and spies" to try to get the FCC to act. From what I understand, there's a legitimate legal question of whether the FCC can make a declaration of the type that law enforcement wants. As I suggested in my last column on this topic, the law enforcement people might have to go back to Congress for such a declaration. At least one thing is clear: The FCC is trying to deal with this complex issue with unseemly haste. The commission provided only a month for public comment, far too little time than needed to provide reasoned responses. The law enforcement request tries to imply that modern civilization is doomed if the FCC does not jump to its bidding instantly

Because this issue, as well described in the law enforcement request, has been festering for many years, I don't see how taking a few months to have a public debate on the trade-offs between a free society and law enforcement in the area of Internet-based communications would have any significant effect.

The Internet industry is working on the technical parts of this problem. For example, Fred Baker and others from Cisco are commendably being quite public in their work (see DocFinders: 1233 and 1234). ISPs can order this CALEA support from Cisco today

But there are some major potential problems with the law enforcement request when it comes to wiretapping switched services over the Internet. This goes to the heart of an earlier column on this topic the bad guys will easily bypass any wiretapping of such services. A number of years ago I asked an FBI person why the agency was pushing key escrow (law enforcement keeping a copy of all encryption keys) because it was so easy for the bad guys to avoid it by using their own end-to-end encryption. He said there were enough dumb criminals to make it worthwhile. I don't think there are enough dumb terrorists and spies to make this part of the proposal worth the negative effect on the innovation of Internet applications. Please respond to the FCC request if you have your own opinions.

Disclaimer: Harvard does not purposely train criminals, but any that get trained here are, by definition, not dumb. The above opinion is mine, not that of the university.

Bradner is a consultant with Harvard Uniuersity's University Information Systems. He can be reached at sob@sob.com.