The government wants the ability to tap VoIP calls - that includes voice chats on IM software by the way - and to do it they'll need access to ALL of your network traffic. Even better, they want to force ISPs to store your traffic for them without reimbursement. We know the ISPs will pass those costs to the consumer. End result: you'll be paying for the priviledge of having Big Brother looking over your shoulder.
They are trying to get this authority through ammendments to the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA). Perhaps I shouldn't get too excited about this; it appears they are able to do whatever they wish even when there are legal restrictions in place. Should we all be concerned, or am I too cynical? You be the judge.
"Also interesting is section 103e, which deals with 'network access service assistance requirements.' The entire section was added to clarify what, exactly, network operators need to do in order to make their networks wiretap-friendly. The government realizes that it would pose an undue burden on carriers to make them responsible for 'looking inside' each packet and filtering it based on content. Instead, the law directs operators to grab the full 'stream of wire or electronic communications'—in other words, all network data transmitted by an individual.
This stream would then be passed to the government, which would have the job of sifting through it and extracting only the information covered by the court order (VoIP, e-mail, etc.). A government analysis of this section concludes that such a data stream might be too much for the government to handle in real-time. The analysis notes that 'some temporary storage or buffering may be necessary' and network operators must 'be capable of storing communications and other information or time period specified by the law enforcement agency as necessary to effectuate the interception or access.'
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