Well, a secure H.323 is certainly better than nothing, but as of right now the world looks like its going to remain circuit switched for a long time. That means most standard telephone calls will potentially be under scrutiny, unless encryption is used at the end points. And I guess that's where one would ultimately want to do that anyway... -TD
From: Thomas Shaddack <shaddack@ns.arachne.cz> To: Tyler Durden <camera_lumina@hotmail.com> CC: <cypherpunks@minder.net> Subject: Re: Metaswitch cleared by FBI for spying Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2003 23:07:30 +0200 (CEST)
ALAMEDA, Calif. -- MetaSwitch, supplier of the VP3500, the industry's first true Next Generation Class 5 Switch, announced today that it has completed an extensive review with the FBI, which demonstrates that the MetaSwitch CALEA specification meets the J-STD-025A standard for circuit switching equipment.
What's the chance to amend the H.323 specs with end-to-end encryption, and/or make publicly available design of phone switching system built on fully open designs, something that the user can audit and amend, something over which nobody but the user has the control?
There are already general steps in the right direction out there, see eg. http://www.openh323.org/ and http://www.opencores.org/ - could even be a good small-to-medium size business for the manufacturers of the hardware, generic boards for the PABXes - boards with interface circuits, and empty, user-programmable FPGAs? An open-source FPGA core firmware could come free with the package, or developed in-house to suit needs (or, most likely, combination of both approaches - build the function from blocks).
Then we'd get cheaper private switchboards with guaranteed NO CALEA "extensions", full knowledge of what's inside (and the associated chance to do our own in-house service without need of expensive vendor service contracts and dependency on their servicemen).
Fully open, fully documented designs are the only doable way of getting infrastructure building blocks that aren't vulnerable to incorporating (either by the vendor being forced by law, or by "voluntary cooperation") of little agents of Big Brother.
Or did I smoked one puff too much?
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