Wiretapping Woes (Spectrum Online)

By Sandra UpsonTrouble ahead for those wanting to monitor Internet-based calls

The telecommunications world was a much simpler place in 1994, when the U.S. Congress passed a landmark wiretapping law. At the time, the statute was meant to take advantage of the new fact that instead of doing wiretaps the old-fashioned way-by walking into a local phone company office with a warrant and some alligator clips-law enforcement officers now could conduct a wiretap centrally on a carrier’s network by duplicating a phone call digitally and directing the copy to police headquarters.

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Encryption and wiretapping @ Educated Guesswork

May 13, 2007

Encryption and wiretapping

Bellovin writes: Those who remember the Crypto Wars of the 1990s will recall all of the claims about “we won’t be able to wiretap because of encryption”. In that regard, this portion of the latest DoJ wiretap report is interesting:

Public Law 106-197 amended 18 U.S.C. 2519(2)(b) to require that reporting should reflect the number of wiretap applications granted for which encryption was encountered and whether such encryption prevented law enforcement officials from obtaining the plain text of communications intercepted pursuant to the court orders. In 2006, no instances were reported of encryption encountered during any federal or state wiretap.

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