Obama administration revives Draconian communications intercept plans

Ken Buchanan ken.buchanan at gmail.com
Wed Sep 29 07:52:58 EDT 2010


On Tue, Sep 28, 2010 at 1:47 AM, Florian Weimer <fw at deneb.enyo.de> wrote:
> Isn't this just a clarification of existing CALEA practice?
>
> In most jurisdictions, if a communications services provider is served
> an order to make available communications, it is required by law to
> provide it in the clear.  Anything else doesn't make sense, does it?
> Service providers generally acknowledge this (including Research In
> Motion, so I don't get why they are singled out in the article).
>

Florian,

The article seems to be saying that this would prohibit service
providers from building strong end to end encryption onto their
service offerings, where they do not possess the key themselves. There
are only a handful of services that currently have offerings that fit
this description, because it generally requires that clients at both
end points are both made by the provider. It does not appear that this
would affect crypto offerings by other technology companies who do not
provide communications services.

Of course, the text of any forthcoming bill is not yet known, and in
any case I am not a lawyer.

Neither is Chris Soghoian, but he makes an interesting point about
CALEA: http://paranoia.dubfire.net/2010/09/calea-and-encryption.html

Ken

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