Happy Internet WireTap Day!
Yes, that’s right: May 14th is the deadline for broadband Internet providers to finish backdoors. These portals are meant to allow the FBI to more easily monitor network traffic. It’s all thanks to a reinterpretation of the CALEA act, originally meant to facilitate traditional phone taps. As the Wired Blog post by Kevin Poulsen says:
While CALEA is all about phones, the Justice Department began lobbying the FCC in 2002 to reinterpret the law as applying to the internet as well. The commission obliged, and last June a divided federal appeals court upheld the expansion 2-1. (The dissenting judge called the FCC’s position “gobbledygook.” But he was outnumbered.)
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Making surveillance easier and faster gives law enforcement agencies of all stripes more reason to eschew old-fashioned police work in favor of spying. The telephone CALEA compliance deadline was in 2002, and since then the amount of court-ordered surveillance has nearly doubled from 2,586 applications granted that year, to 4,015 orders in 2006.
Sure, privacy on the net is about as realistic as watchable Uwe Boll movie. Still, living in blissful ignorance is so much easier when the government isn’t involved.
