Every communications medium brings with it the potential for misuse, and the government has always been eager to have some sort of ‘backdoor’ access into that medium so as to avoid being left in the dark. Sometimes the only way to catch criminals/terrorists in the act has been to tap their communications - be it on traditional phone lines, cell phones, or email. Now with the recent surge in VoIP (Voice over IP) usage, the government once again seeks to ensure its ability to ‘tap the lines’ and monitor any suspected criminal activity.

CALEA, the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, came into effect 11 years ago as a way for the federal government to wiretap ‘telecommunications carriers’; the government now wants to expand that act’s coverage to include VoIP providers and ISPs carrying VoIP traffic. The current push is to get CALEA extended in full force to Internet phone traffic in the next 18 months. A new C|Net article details the government’s position, as well as some of the challenges being raised to this expansion. The challenges, however, largely focus on seeking exemptions for particular groups, such as universities, from having to add such backdoors to their systems.

Upon some basic review, it seems that the government’s position is a difficult one to maintain. The desire for wiretapping is understandable: in theory, wiretapping is reserved for when the government cannot gather evidence in other ways but has verifiable suspicion of wrongdoing. Granting exemptions to several groups may, however, simply result in criminals using those systems for their activities; if all universities are exempt from providing backdoor access to their systems, then surely those networks would be the logical place to conduct (illegal) business. From a privacy perspective, in gaining this expansion the government would be extending a very broad net of backdoor access to Internet traffic. It is also unclear whether CALEA was ever meant to extend into the online world. An earlier C|Net article covered many of the privacy and legal arguments raised by VoIP providers and concerned advocacy groups.