Recent advancements in Broadband and internet telephony communications has the government spooked, so they've put VOIP surveillance at the top of their priority list, working with hardware manufacturers to make sure they get their man. As we've mentioned in the past, Jeff Pulver won a recent court victory which declares that his "Free World Dial-Up" VOIP service is not subject to the same legal guidelines faced by telcos. This of course has the FBI worried that all sorts of nasty terrorists will now be using VOIP as a secured method of communication to avoid being tapped.

Pulver also took things one step further by requesting a "declaratory ruling" that Free World Dial-Up should exist outside the FCC's jurisdiction entirely, and that it was simply another web application like an instant messaging service or e-mail. (You can find a pdf copy of the request here) Of course his moves haven't made him a popular man among telcos who worry about unregulated competition; or the FBI, who don't like the idea of an untouchable communication medium.

That's where the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) comes in. Its purpose was to force telecom companies to make their networks "wiretap friendly" for Uncle Sam. Since it was originally drafted in 1994, it's obviously not fully applicable to VOIP communications; though the FBI is working hard to make it stretch to fit, even though most analysts don't believe that's a legal battle the FBI can win.

The FBI is now afraid that other services like Free World Dial-Up, if not clearly defined and addressed by monitoring laws, will follow suit and begin thinking their exempt to the CALEA (which they very well may be). The FBI has voiced concern that such a shift creates a "security black hole" and births a communications stream that they'll have little control over (ignoring the fact that in the end they'll likely use technologies like Carnivore and Echelon to simply get the surveillance data they need anyway).

With concerns of terrorism front and center they've begun working more closely with hardware manufacturers to ease their worried minds. Last week a company named MetaSwitch unveiled a switch that embeds police spy features into its hardware to comply with the CALEA. "We simplified providing CALEA compliance for our customers by incorporating CALEA functionality on-board the MetaSwitch VP3500 rather than requiring additional external equipment", said John Lazar, Vice President of Sales and Marketing. "We are ensuring the completeness of our solution with ongoing testing with the FBI."

Many critics aren't shocked by the FBI's approach, and think back to 1999 when the door was left ajar on the issue of internet monitoring by the Internet Engineering Task Force. By not settling the issue then (which at the time was seen as a privacy and civil victory), you've now got the FBI working quietly behind closed doors with manufacturers to build proprietary monitoring solutions.

Washington D.C. Attorney Stewart Baker responds to the Politech mailing list with an utter lack of surprise, noting that this recent shift is "just the tip of the iceberg."

With the Justice department working their hardest to modify the CALEA to apply to data networks, (thereby obliterating the dividing line between data and telco communications) Baker notes that hardware makers planning for success are best served by building CALEA functionality into their products. He also notes that "it's tempting to offer a new generation of equipment that the FBI may require your customers to buy."

You can find discussion on these and similar issues within our VOIP, Security, and Broadband Politics forums