Thursday, March 28, 2013

Extending CALEA to Cover the Cloud?

There is a great discussion over on Slate about how the FBI sees it's ability to listen in via tapping phones as "going dark".  Why use a landline or a cell phone when you can use your webcam to orchestrate your criminal enterprises?

http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/03/26/andrew_weissmann_fbi_wants_real_time_gmail_dropbox_spying_power.html

The blog suggests that the FBI is interested in extending CALEA, the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, to cover Gmail, Google Voice, and other cloud services.  This isn't a new thing exactly.  Law enforcement has been working for some time now to figure out how to apply CALEA to VoIP, for example.  It was only a matter of time before Instant Messaging fell under that same category.

Kids today prefer texting to talking anyway.

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