These Are Not Your Father's Wiretaps (Business Week, 27 Feb 03)

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: GLIGOR1 () aol com
Date: Sat, 22 Mar 2003 18:55:37 -0500 (EST)
To: dave () farber net
Subject: These Are Not Your Father's Wiretaps (Business Week, 27 Feb 03)



FEBRUARY 27, 2003 

PRIVACY MATTERS 
By Jane Black 




These Are Not Your Father's Wiretaps


    
Privacy advocates fear that the FBI's need to monitor Internet Age
technologies, such as voice over IP, will give it far too sweeping powers
In the old days, tapping a phone was as easy as one-two-three. All calls ran
over Ma Bell's copper wires. To listen in, law-enforcement agents simply
requested that the phone company isolate the suspect's wire and record any
calls made or received. One phone company. One network. One flip of a
switch. 

That was eons ago by techno-standards, however. The new world of
telecommunications has made it much harder for the FBI to thwart evildoers
-- and for privacy advocates to ensure that the agency doesn't overstep its
bounds. Today, dozens of new technologies need to be monitored, such as
packet voice and cellular text messaging. And thousands of new service
providers are now in business. "Every time the technology moves ahead, you
have all these pitfalls -- all these potential points where we can creep
away from the status quo to a far more intrusive type of surveillance," says
Lee Tien, a senior attorney at San Francisco-based advocacy group the
Electronic Frontier Foundation.

The job of sorting out the mess falls in large part to Les Szwajkowski, the
director of the FBI's CALEA surveillance policy and planning unit. (CALEA is
an acronym for Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, which was
passed in 1994 and granted the FBI the right to conduct surveillance on any
new technologies that arise.) With his staff of 50 engineers, lawyers, and
surveillance experts, Szwajkowski's most pressing task is finding a way to
tackle the challenge of packetized voice, better known as VOIP (for voice
over Internet protocol), which is steadily gaining a foothold in the U.S.
market. VOIP provider Vonage in Edison, N.J., alone has lured 15,000
customers since it launched in April, 2002.

"SHORT ONE PLAYER."  Last month, law-enforcement officials and telecom
providers such as Vonage gathered at a closed-door meeting in Chicago to
plan for the digital future. The technology makes for some tough issues for
policymakers. Unlike a traditional phone call, where a line is dedicated
between two parties, VOIP slices each call into millions of tiny digital
packets, each of which can take a discrete route over the Internet. That
means surveillance equipment must either be installed permanently on a
network or calls must be routed through FBI surveillance equipment before
being delivered to the caller, which experts say can create a suspicious
delay. 

"Our tactical people are trying to plug every hole. But it's like playing
the field short one player," says Szwajkowski. "A call that is not [able to
be intercepted] is a major public-safety and security dilemma."

This isn't the first time the FBI has faced such a challenge. As early as
the 1980s, new features such as call forwarding and conference calling
created loopholes for crafty criminals. If the FBI tapped a suspect's office
phone, that person could forward the call to a home line if he or she
smelled a wiretap -- outfoxing the FBI. Conference calls also thwarted
so-called pen register and trap-and-trace orders, which allow
law-enforcement agencies to record all the calls made or received on a
particular line. 

WHO YA GONNA CALL?  To trick the feds, one untapped person could call
another and then conference in the suspected wrongdoer, without the call
being registered by law enforcement. From 1992 to 1994, a total of 183
federal, state, and local law-enforcement cases were impeded by advances in
digital technology, according to congressional testimony by then-FBI
Director Louis Freeh.

Szwajkowski's job is all the more complicated because of the explosion of
new communications providers since the 1996 Telecommunications Act. Today,
it's not just the phone company that completes calls. It could be an
Internet service provider, a VOIP startup, or both. In rural areas, it's not
uncommon for startups, such as Paul Bunyon Telecom in Bemidji, Minn., or
CBeyond Communications in Atlanta, to serve just a few thousand customers
apiece. 

"The number of new players is staggering to us," Szwajkowski says. "It was
hard enough before to balance technology and economics. Today we have to
negotiate with a whole new set of entrants with a range of demands and
circumstances." 

HUNGRY CARNIVORE.  Therein lies a danger, say privacy advocates. They worry
that the FBI will use the rise of the packet technology and the expanding
number of players as an excuse to expand its all-seeing, all-knowing
surveillance power.

Here's why: VOIP travels across the Internet the same way that e-mail does.
Address information (the number dialed or the e-mail address) is contained
in the same packet as the content (what is said or written). The FBI's
solution for e-mail is the notorious Carnivore technology, which sucks up
all data that passes its way. The FBI claims that Carnivore filters traffic
and delivers to investigators only packets that they're lawfully authorized
to obtain. But because the details remain secret, the public must trust the
FBI's characterization of the system and -- more significant -- that it's
complying with legal requirements.

Carnivore has been highly controversial, and privacy advocates fear the FBI
will develop a similar system for VOIP. "The very nature of packet
technology means that whether it's an e-mail or a voice call, [the FBI] can
get more and more information that allows them to be more and more
privacy-invasive," says the EFF's Tien.

A NEW ERA.  The sheer number of players could put privacy at an even greater
disadvantage. In the old days, the FBI went head-to-head with the likes of
AT&T (T ) or Verizon (VZ ), each of which has an army of lawyers to fight
off any onerous requirements. In an emerging area such as VOIP, however,
small companies are on the cutting edge, and they have no money to staff a
huge legal department.

Szwajkowski plays down these fears. "I'm a citizen too. I don't want to be
surveilled without law enforcement having built up a serious case in front
of a judge," he says. "All we want is the ability to intercept, whatever
technology they use to communicate."

Figuring out just how to do that will be tough -- even with the best of
intentions. Compromises between law enforcement and carriers over the coming
year will usher in a new era of government surveillance. To avoid another
Carnivore, privacy advocates must stay alert.


Black <mailto:jane_black () businessweek com>  covers privacy issues for
BusinessWeek Online in her twice-monthly Privacy Matters column
Edited by Douglas Harbrecht


Copyright 2000-2003, by The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All rights reserved.
Terms of Use <http://www.businessweek.com:/copyrt.htm>    Privacy Policy
<http://www.businessweek.com:/privacy.htm>



------ End of Forwarded Message

-------------------------------------
You are subscribed as interesting-people () lists elistx com
To manage your subscription, go to
  http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip

Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/