The Federal Bureau of Investigation is pushing for a law that would
force social networks, email providers, and other peer-to-peer services
to become "wiretap-friendly" according to a CNET report.
Such legislation would expand an existing federal law that applies to
cell phone operators and broadband networks. Under 1994's
Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), carriers and
broadband networks must have built-in backdoors giving law enforcement
agencies direct access to user data during warranted investigations.
CALEA began with carriers in 1994 and expanded to broadband providers in
2004. At the moment, Internet companies use their own slurping methods
to provide user data to law enforcement during search warrants.
But now that the means of communications are shifting once again, the
FBI wants to extend CALEA to Internet companies like Twitter,
Microsoft, Yahoo, Facebook, and Google. The FBI is also seeking to
expand CALEA to cover instant messaging services like Apple iChat, AOL
Instant Messanger, Gmail Chat—even Xbox Live’s in-game chat. Most
companies were unavailable for comment, but a spokesperson at
Microsoft-owned Skype told Security Watch it hadn't heard of such
murmurings on Capitol Hill: “To our knowledge, we have not seen a
legislative proposal this session from either the Administration or on
the Hill that would change the scope of the existing law."
According to
CNET,
the FBI has been meeting with Internet companies, senators, and the
White House to urge them not to oppose legislation that would permit
this. The proposed legislation has already been approved by the
Department of Justice and would need to overcome a tough battle in
Congress.
The FBI also wants these companies to provide the tools to easily
decode data obtained through surveillance. Something like this could
make it easier for government forensics agents to, say,
crack an Android pin-lock. Furthermore many companies, such as BlackBerry and Skype, encrypt users' messages.
In March, Microsoft’s controversial application for a “legal intercept” was approved. As we
reported earlier,
in 2009 Skype filed a patent for software that would let someone
surreptitiously record a call on a VoIP network; Microsoft rationalized
the patent as a way to answer to government requests for surveillance
and wiretapping. Google, Twitter, and Facebook also regularly field a
vast amount of government subpoenas for user data.
FBI's "Going Dark" Problem
Expanding CALEA would help the FBI with its “
Going Dark”
problem, a phenomenon coined by FBI director Richard Mueller to
describe the agency's shrinking power to monitor Americans, as
communications technologies shift once again. A January report from
Citigroup found that text messaging is on the decline as users embracee
free messaging clients like WhatsApp and Skype, or
simply communicated
through Facebook and Twitter.
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