Internet Wiretapping: Snoop or Safety Tool?

The world is a scary place. It doesn't look all that bad on the surface. It's the stuff that you can't see and hear that gets you. At least this is the U.S. Governmwent's point of view. Federal authorities want to implement new Internet "Wiretap" regulations that peel back that digital cover and expose it all: the good, the bad, and the ugly.

New York Times report

According to a New York Times report, Federal officials are preparing to ask for some particularly sweeping digital rights and what some might see as heavy-handed rules for virtually every company that helps people communicate in the digital age. You know that Skype conversation you had last week? It would be fair game. So is the data you upload and download to your favorite backup service (if it's encrypted, that is). Your VoIP calls? They're on the list, too. Saving money by conducting international business communication over instant messaging or, perhaps, a business class IM tool that encrypts your conversation? Yup, that's up for grabs.

Federal agencies, which have relied on lawfully gained wiretaps, are in full-scale freak-out mode because, bit by bit, they're losing the ability to tap into the intel they desperately need. I, perhaps, more than others, understand how easy it was for, say, the FBI to listen in on old-school phone calls. When I was a kid, my father worked at the telephone company. He used to take me in to the office and show off the massive "trunks"—aisles and aisles of tall racks, crawling with hundreds of thousands of plugs and wires that essentially acted as hubs for local and national phone calls. He told me you could quite easily tap in and listen to calls if you wanted. He never did that. Instead, he would plug in two wires and connect me to my grandmother in Florida. He did this, somehow, without dialing a number.

These days, we're leaving our landlines behind in favor of cell phones, and more and more of our conversations are encrypted in e-mails and ephemeral Facebook chats, Skype calls, and video conferencing. I would guess that 99 percent of this is of no interest to Uncle Sam, but it's the 1 percent that will get you.

The New York Times tells it

As the New York Times tells it, the government is not looking for carte blanche access to our digital and encrypted communications. Instead, it simply wants to ensure it can access them when the need arises. In essence, the Federal Government wants skeleton-key access to the back door of every communication and data service that serves the U.S.

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