Eugen Leitl forwarded:
The constitutional question is whether users have a "reasonable expectation of privacy" in VOIP phone calls. Since the 1960's, the Supreme Court has found a 4th Amendment protection for voice phone calls. Meanwhile, it has found no constitutional protection for stored records. In an article coming out shortly from the Michigan Law Review, I show why VOIP calls quite possibly will be found NOT to have constitutional protection under the 4th Amendment. It would then be up to Congress to fix this, or else have the Supreme Court change its doctrine to provide more protections against future wiretaps. Article at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=490623 .
Call me cynical (no... go ahead), but if VOIP is found to have no 4th Amendment protection, Congress would first have to agree that this *is* a problem before thay could "fix" it. Given the recent track record of legislators vs. privacy, I'm not at all confident Congress would recognize the flaw, much less legislate to extend 4th Amendment protection. After all, arent more and more POTS long-distance calls being routed over IP? The only difference, really, is the point at which audio is fed to the codec. If the codec is in the central office, it's a "voice" call. If it's in the handset or local computer, it's VOIP. I think we can count on the Ashcroftians to eventually notice this and pounce upon the opportunity. And as for the SCOTUS, all they have to do is sit back on a strict interpretation and such intercepts aren't "wiretaps" at all. -- Roy M. Silvernail is roy@rant-central.com, and you're not "It's just this little chromium switch, here." - TFS SpamAssassin->procmail->/dev/null->bliss http://www.rant-central.com