Peter Griffin: Minding your back along the digital highways

They used to call it the "wire-tap" and it's been played out in dozens of cop movies over the years.

The two detectives sit in a little room with earphones pressed to their ears listening in on the phone conversation of some murderous gangsters or drug dealers over the simplest of communication devices - the wired telephone.

Then the mafia discovered the mobile phone and Tony Soprano would berate his "colleagues" for mentioning various things on the air. The feds could even unscramble digital phones, you see.

Now, a vast amount of communication - written, spoken and visual - is done via the internet and while it's hard to imagine Osama bin Laden sitting in on an MSN Instant Messenger chat session to organise his cells around the world, you can bet criminals the world over are using the net to communicate. For that reason, extending wire-tapping laws to the internet makes sense.

Some legislation introduced in New Zealand last year means internet providers have to grant the authorities access to their networks.

In effect that would probably involve the spooks attaching a box to the network of the internet provider to track digital traffic.

The email of suspects can be read and their movements on the web traced down to the bomb-making recipes they are seeking to find at Google.com. Importantly, the legislation doesn't discriminate when it comes to internet traffic.

In theory, then, once armed with the appropriate warrants issued by the Prime Minister, the police, SIS and the Government Communications Security Bureau could listen in on anything carried over the networks of the country's internet providers and telcos.

They could listen to voice calls made over the internet - so-called voice over internet protocol.

In the US, where large VoIP providers such as Skype are based, voice over internet phone calls, strictly speaking, are not covered by legislation allowing electronic wire tapping.

And with Americans so touchy about their civil liberties, the feds have to be legally covered to the hilt before they go snooping.

So the Federal Communications Commission wants legislative changes to cover the whole range of internet communications - from instant messaging to streams from web cameras.

Where's the pressure for this coming from? The FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Justice Department - the big three of law enforcement.

As the US moves to plug holes through which terrorists slither, the internet is being seen as a wild west where information and messages can be exchanged unchecked.

FCC chairman Michael Powell has said the commission's support for law enforcement is "unwavering", but he has also warned against slapping "onerous regulations" on VoIP services.

The thing with voice calls over the internet is that your words are translated into a series of ones and zeros that may not be sent across the internet in one neat package.

Privacy advocates are nervous that such requirements of internet providers could inadvertently allow the internet calls of average web users to be inadvertently listened to.

They have a point. How can we be sure other data going down the pipe will not be inadvertently intercepted?

By and large, however, the packets of data are reassembled at the other end to make sense to the receiver. That's where the interception would logically occur.

But what about encrypted services? Some of the VoIP providers that are popping up encrypt the packets of data making up your voice calls for greater security. The feds would have to be given the authority to bypass that encryption.

In New Zealand, the legislation allows the authorities to request access to encrypted files they know are stored on your machine - computer users face fines and jail if they refuse access and incriminate themselves by default.

While the precedent has already been set in the analog world for interception of VoIP services, the US legislators have a lot of work to do to keep privacy advocates happy.

It should already be taken as given that the authorities have access to pretty much anything that passes over the communications pipes criss-crossing the world. What is more worrying is the access non-official sources already have to the information we send around the world. Because you can guarantee that the more intelligent hackers have already figured out how to capture and record everything said over the VoIP networks.

Think about that next time you flick on your web camera and start chatting with friends around the world or swap some gossip over Skype. Your home phone and mobile are a lot more secure in comparison.


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