Having Trouble on the Line", Aug. 15) David Farber writes:
Can I get a copy for IP
The original article is at http://www.time.com/time/archive/preview/0,10987,1090908,00.html (subscription required) Here's the letter we sent: Your account of FBI efforts to embed wiretapping into the design of new Internet communication technologies ("Psst! The FBI is Having Trouble on the Line," Notebook, August 15) is in error. You claim that police "can't tap into [Internet] conversations or identify the location of callers, even with court orders." That is false. Internet service providers and VoIP companies have consistently responded to such orders and turned over information in their possession. There is no evidence that law enforcement is having any trouble obtaining compliance. But more disturbingly, you omit entirely any reference to the grave threat these FBI initiatives pose to the personal privacy and security of innocent Americans. The technologies currently used to create wiretap-friendly computer networks make the people on those networks more pregnable to attackers who want to steal their data or personal information. And at a time when many of our most fundamental consititutional rights are being stripped away in the name of fighting terrorism, you implicitly endorse opening yet another channel for potential government abuse. The legislative history of the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) shows that Congress recognized the danger of giving law enforcement this kind of surveillance power "in the face of increasingly powerful and personally revealing technologies" (H.R. Rep. No. 103-827, 1994 U.S.C.C.A.N. 3489, 3493 [1994] [House Report]). The law explicitly exempts so-called information services; law enforcement repeatedly assured civil libertarians that the Internet would be excluded. Yet the FBI and FCC have now betrayed that promise and stepped beyond the law, demanding that Internet software be redesigned to facilitate eavesdropping. In the coming months, we expect the federal courts to rein in these dangerously expansive legal intepretations. -- Seth Schoen Staff Technologist schoen@eff.org Electronic Frontier Foundation http://www.eff.org/ 454 Shotwell Street, San Francisco, CA 94110 1 415 436 9333 x107 ------------------------------------- You are subscribed as eugen@leitl.org To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/ ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature which had a name of signature.asc]