From EFF comes the news that the FCC has issued rules expanding the scope of Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act (CALEA).
The new twist?
The ruling…will force Internet broadband providers and certain Voice-over-IP (VoIP) providers to build backdoors into their networks that make it easier for law enforcement to wiretap them.
This decision was driven by a petition to the FCC by the FBI,DOJ and the DEA. To again quote EFF:
The FBI used the “tappability principle” to justify the demands in its petition. This principle holds that if something is legally searchable sometimes, it should be physically searchable all the time. But there is a vast difference between a computer network switch created precisely to be tappable and one that can be tapped with the right tools under the right circumstances. If we applied the FBI’s logic to the phone system, it would state that every individual phone should be designed with built-in bugs. Consumers would simply have to trust law enforcement or the phone companies not to activate those bugs without just cause.
The icing on the cake of this decision, besides making our online data that much more vulnerable to theft and misuse? We get to pay for the privilege.
The NPRM’s(Notice of Proposed Rulemaking) proposed expansion of CALEA would also punish broadband providers and consumers, concluding that carriers should forced to spend millions of dollars on CALEA compliance. The FCC explores a mechanism by which these costs will pass to their customers, including a Commission mandated flat monthly charge. Quite literally, then, consumers would be subsidizing the surveillance state.
I don’t know if they supply the orange jumpsuit with the monthly fee or if it’s extra…
