Posted on 03/07/2007 8:43:09 PM PST by The Watcher
I posted a while back about the financial and business aspects of CALEA on your local ISP's.
Oddly enough, most people thought I was just ignorant. Well, THEY are ignorant.
There's an interesting blog thread here: http://blogs.globalcrossing.com/paulk?from=60
He makes a very sharp point. While the original CALEA legislation was little other than requiring (and paying) the telcos to ensure that normal phone taps could occur, the DOJ and FCC have suddenly strayed far beyond that. VIOP was unknown at the time CALEA was written. But, it's been construed by the FCC to apply to all services that carry voice, chat, or communication that COULD be intercepted over the internet, as well.
Thus, your ISP, local community network, local school, university, EVERYONE that connects you to the internet at faster than 200 kilobits per second is required to pre-tap your 'net connection.
To make a relevant comparison, to which the non-techie can relate.. It's as if tomorrow, federal housing laws required that peepholes be installed, and stands at every window, remotes controls for the curtains, be installed on every home so that law enforcement could look in without hindrance. EVERY home, and that no rooms in the home be invisible from outside the home, for law enforcement purposes. If that means gutting the house to reveal otherwise hidden rooms, that's what it takes.
To top it off, the building codes were vague and said merely that "the means of seeing every place in the house" must be installed, and that you must hire consultants and lawyers to ensure that your home complies. And that if the cop sent to spy on you is too short to look through the peep hole in the door and bathroom wall, then you're going to be fined as a builder, homeowner, or landlord, EVEN IF YOU GOT APPROVAL FOR YOUR DESIGN AND THE CONSULTANTS AND LAWYERS SAID IT WAS OK and you got approval for your plans on paper.
The FCC and FBI have publicly stated that they do not give legal advice, and so, you must hire lawyers to figure out IF and HOW you must comply, and consultants to tell you how to do it, unless you comply with "industry standards", except that there's no industry standard, and if there ever becomes one, it may bankrupt you to try to implement it.
NO, there is no money from the government to become compliant. That was exhausted long ago and it was only for the telcos anyway.
Of course the idea of requiring homes to have the means of letting law enforcement look in anywhere and any spot at will is absurd. But CALEA is interpreted as EXACTLY THAT for all digital communications, period. And not only that, it's required of everyone AT THEIR OWN EXPENSE, as well.
Just for those of you who wonder, I run an ISP.
BTW, a few days ago, the FCC required every ISP, telco, network provider, and so on, file documents attesting to their readiness for CALEA. They required all of us to explain how and what we're doing to be compliant, if not, why not, and when that will be rectified. Yet many of us have absolutely NO idea how to comply, or even what is required to comply, since both the FCC and FBI adamantly refuse to specify.
"Hire lawyers and consults" is all they say.
Talks are underway in DC between the FCC, FBI, and a few industry representatives... And that effort is likely to control the nature and behavior of your provider and possibly even the way you connect to the internet from now on.
It would have been nice if you defined the term CALEA for those of us not in the know.
Never mind, I found it with the Keyword search:
Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act
What is Calea?
It's not quite that simple, and this is not constant wiretapping. I understand the threatening aspect of this, but there is another side too.
In the case of a valid and court-ordered surveillance, there does need to be a mechanism for law enforcement to actually perform the wiretap. Technology doesn't have to give bad guys an advantage just because the law didn't envision it years ago. If encryption and IP comms can be configured to make them untappable, is that really in our best interest?
Should terrorists be able to communicate with no way to stop them? I don't think so. I'm sensitive to the risk of abuse too, and I'm not sure I know where the exact balance point is... but there is a legitimate problem here that does need some attention.
Thanks
As I have said before, all governments move inexorably in the direction of becoming totalitarian dictatorships.
...onion routing?
(which, ironically was developed by the U.S. Navy)...
Being a Telecommunications tech for over thirty years I can sure speak to that. I've listened to phone calls that would really turn your head, but strangely only one crime being planned. Since it was not against the President or the rest of the NCA I couldn't do anything about it.
Years ago, when I worked on MIDS at Sprint, we would even monitor the IMTs between New York and Miami instead of listen to the radio. That was always good for laughs! The Gays alone were a Soap Opera! I had no idea people could really be like that.
Oh, by the way, we always only monitored calls for quality control ostensibly to detect possible noise and static or other transmission impairments. Wink - wink, nudge - nudge!
Nowadays, with digital communications, there is a much lower chance that anyone will monitor you calls or emails.
Encryption is easy these days. We'd only catch the few terrorists stupid enough not to use it, and we'd probably catch terrorists that stupid in other ways.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1797295/posts
Total Information Awareness
The Washington Times ^ | March 8, 2007 | Audrey Hudson
Posted on 03/08/2007 6:49:14 AM CST by Golden Press
Homeland Security officials are testing a supersnoop computer system that sifts through personal information on U.S. citizens to detect possible terrorist attacks, prompting concerns from lawmakers who have called for investigations. The system uses the same data-mining process that was developed by the Pentagon's Total Information Awareness (TIA) project that was banned by Congress in 2003 because of vast privacy violations.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
The ADVISE and TIA data-mining projects rely on personal data to track individual behavior and consumer transactions to develop computer algorithms that create a pattern that some behavioral scientists say can predict terrorist behavior.
Data can include credit-card purchases, telephone or Internet details, medical records, travel and banking information.
Privacy concerns prompted lawmakers on both sides of the aisle to introduce legislation in January to require that government agencies disclose data-mining practices in regular reports to Congress.
correct, so long as this is through valid court orders - there is no issue.
now, that's not to say I haven't heard gonzales and DHS asking for historical logging of EVERYTHING, that idea is floating out there, and its crazy.
Agreed. That would be nuts. Talk about trying to drink from a firehose...
Not correct at all.
read later bump ...;-)
Agreed.
".....don't know the provisions of CALEA, nor what you mean by "pre tap" your Internet connection--however, ANYTHING sent over the Internet is NOT private"
what if I don't use my true identity? and next, didn't they come up with a way for the party-line to go off into non-existance?
You don't understand. For the most part, IP networks ARE NOT "tappable" anyway. Depending on the physical nature of the network, it may be all but impossible.
Should terrorists be able to communicate with no way to stop them? I don't think so. I'm sensitive to the risk of abuse too, and I'm not sure I know where the exact balance point is... but there is a legitimate problem here that does need some attention.
I disagree, should we do EVERYTHING POSSIBLE to prevent terrorists? Let's ban talking, let's ban guns, let's ban flying, let's ban box knives, let's ban fertilizer... Obviously NOT. But the issue is apparently not recognized by you, and that it's this... The federal government has created a wish list of services they want your ISP and other service providers TO GIVE THEM. No compensation, no payments, nothing. When the federal government takes your land without compensation, we fight all the way to the supreme court. When the federal government takes my time, money, and requires me to provide services that earn me a living for free... YOU DEFEND IT. Of all places, you'd expect AT LEAST Freepers to catch on to the issue. I guess I expect far too much to figure people would think for at least 5 seconds before they side with Big Brother. Apparenlty not even Freepers care about the Constitution and our rights to not be robbed.
of course IP networks are tappable.
again, you have no constitutional issue to stand on - all of this is with court ordered warrants. if it goes beyond that, that's a different story.
> again, you have no constitutional issue to stand on -
Ah well... better yet, with PGP or any other decent public key encryption, you don't need one. The feds can enjoy scanning gobbledegook all day long.
http://www.pgp.com/downloads/index.html
What do you mean they're "tappable"?
What, exactly, do you know about running an IP based network? Do you run one, I do.
YOu tell me how to "tap" a multipath, multihome, dynamicly routed network, with NO physical media between routers.
That's right, I run a WIRELESS network, that has no physical connections... EXCEPT at the customer's computer, and at the border gateway(s), with multiple paths out and in from each host.
You still don't get it. I guess I'll start a new thread, and this time try to explain it down to baby steps, since nobody seems to want to think... (sigh).
your network is wireless to a point. at some point, it comes off the air to an access point - that has physical connections - that can be bridged and sniffed.
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