Wikileaks Publishes FBI VoIP Surveillance Docs 145
An anonymous reader writes "The folks on wikileaks have published a new interesting and shocking report: FBI Electronic Surveillance Needs for Carrier-Grade Voice over Packet (CGVoP) Service.
The 88 paged document, which is part of the CALEA Implementation Plan was published in January 2003 and describes in detail all needs for surveillance of phone calls made via data services like the internet.
Wikileaks has not published any analysis yet, so maybe some of the techies hanging around this end of the internet are interested in taking that one on."
Why is this shocking? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:PGPfone, where are you? (Score:4, Informative)
It handles encryption using ZRTP [wikipedia.org]/SRTP [wikipedia.org] and can do point-to-point (IP2IP) calls like good'ole Speak Freely.
Old (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Why is this shocking? (Score:2, Informative)
I'm inclined to agree. I looked into CALEA a couple of years ago as part of an investigation to see what impacts it might have for universities. Much of the public criticism seemed to assume that it was a way for law enforcement to tap all communications. In fact, it is the exact equivalent of existing wiretaps: they don't get a full feed; they get data for specific authorized interceptions. I admit to some concern about apparent diversion of massive traffic flows. It may be a good idea, but I'd like to see some accountability, even classified accountability. But CALEA isn't designed to provide the kind of access that I find worrisome. I'd much rather see its approach than to see federal agencies sifting through all traffic.
I have no idea why this document is restricted. It is pretty obvious given the goals of CALEA.
Re:paradigm shift (Score:5, Informative)
Re:PGPfone, where are you? (Score:5, Informative)
Public Standards (Score:5, Informative)
Those detail exactly WHAT and HOW monitoring is going to occur, on a technical level.
And don't get your knickers in a twist about the FBI document. I've already seen one instance where the FBI told a carrier "we want it done this way" and the carrier's lawyers said "no, that isn't legal and we won't do it". Of course, it was probably a result of the software not being implemented in that manner and it would have cost the carrier mucho $$ to do it the FBI's way...
Nothing like a few $$ to prompt the legal dept. to see it your way.
http://www.google.com/search?q=j-std-025&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t [google.com]
Re:paradigm shift (Score:5, Informative)
Senator Obama's qualifications Include a J.D. in constitutional law from Harvard, He was a lecturer of constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School, and he worked as a community organizer and later as a lawyer representing community organizers on voting rights and discrimination issues.
So yeah I think that there is some evidence that he might have a better understanding of and respect for the constitution of the United States of America.
this can be confirmed with a simple wikipedia [wikipedia.org] search or set of google searches (or by reading his first book, Dreams from My Father).
Just because something is not yet proven does not mean that no evidence exists.
I call BS (Score:5, Informative)
The capability is needed, but so is proper oversight and protection of Consitutional rights. Then again all you wanted was to squeeze in your Obama ad
don't know what you're talking about (Score:3, Informative)
said by who? Let me guess, he was an "anarchist," by which I mean high school drop out living in his mom's basement, complaining that society would be "so much more awesome" if there weren't any rules, and he didn't have to keep his room clean.
Anarchy:
"Absence of government; a state of lawlessness due to the absence or inefficiency of the supreme power; political disorder."''
Any social endeavor has politics and power relationships and de facto governing processes by which collective decisions are made, they even exist within families and other tiny social units. Anarchy is just a society where those relationships are no longer functional and stable. You have groups competing for power without a mediator and chaos persists (e.g. Iraq and Afghanistan).
Humans can't survive in anarchy because we are social animals, and require cooperation and certain kinds of power relationships to survive. People naturally form social structures with leaders and followers, it's part of basic human psychology.
Even the free software movement has leaders with specific powers that they can enforce. That you think otherwise just goes to show that you've never contributed. Linus doesn't let any patches into mainline Linux that he doesn't want to, and that effectively kills those patches. Other organizations have even more stringent policies. To commit to FSF, Mono, and many other projects and organizations you must turn over your copyright to them, so that they can relicense it under whatever terms they want (presumably, the next version of the GPL, but who knows?).
Often a company is responsible for all of the high level design of a product, and controls the repository, and open source developers are either hired by said company to do the work, or are on the periphery.
Even if a specific company isn't responsible for high level design, some people are de facto designers. This isn't that different than in a company, and these relationships naturally form even if they aren't dictated, otherwise the project falls apart.
Open source isn't really a "governing model," it's just the same old human behavior and practices, but with a new software license.