

Is VoIP communication being Abused?  - omfut
http://latestgeeknews.blogspot.com/2009/02/is-voip-communication-being-abused.html

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jrockway
Wow, this is a really poorly written article. I'm not sure if it's supposed to
be "news" or "opinion", but either way, there is not much substance... and the
writing isn't that great either.

It seems like the author thinks Skype helps terrorism by allowing terrorists
to communicate securely. This is true, it probably does. But by that logic,
Wikipedia aids terrorism by letting terrorists get encyclopedia articles for
free. We shouldn't let the "terrorism" boogeyman take our right to privacy
away. There is plenty of reason for ordinary people to want secure VoIP. Maybe
you don't want your boss listening in on conversations with your family. Maybe
you don't want a casual eavesdropper to listen in on your conversation and
take something the wrong way.

Anyway, if Skype sells out to the governments of the world, it's trivial for
the terrorists to use something else. I could probably write an encrypted VoIP
app in an evening. So if you want to eliminate secure communication to aid the
fight on terrorism, you are just giving up your own rights. _You_ won't have
secure phone calls, but you can bet the terrotists will.

~~~
omfut
Iam not sure what was that you were looking for in the article. (Lawful
intercept requirement is a vast subject to explain in few paragraphs). Couple
of points: 1) Lawful intercept requirements have been supported by wireless
and wireline switches for years now. So the ability to wiretap your
conversation is already available to law enforcement agencies. Having said
that, to wiretap any user, law enforcement agency should get a prior approval
from the court. So just because a product supports wiretapping doesn’t mean
that anyone can listen to your conversation. So below points mentioned by you
doesn’t make sense "Maybe you don't want a casual eavesdropper to listen in on
your conversation and take something the wrong way"

2) Skype has issues with supporting wiretapping because of its architecture.
If it’s used for illegal activities then I don’t see any reason why law
enforcement can force them to support the same. These are the guys who are
working hard to nail these assholes.

3) I don’t see a point in comparing reading offline data like wikipedia and
real-time voice communication.

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lionhearted
Let's replace "VoIP" with "paper" -

We have heard a lot of stories about how _paper_ has been used by terrorist
and criminals for illegal activities. The recent Mumbai attack on Indian soil
makes it more compelling for _paper_ to support Lawful intercept requirements.
So what makes this kind of communication more attractive to illegal
activities. Hard to _read_ the conversation. The regular PSTN and wireless
communication standards have very good wiretapping capabilities and most of
the vendors support Lawful Intercept features, using which, voice or text
conversation can be wiretapped by Law enforcement agencies. Though the FCC has
been pushing for Lawful Intercept requirement for _reading and writing_ , very
few vendors are really compliant with the requirement

