quote:CALEA (Computer Assistance Law Enforcement) is quietly in the background of current news again, because the FBI is pushing congress to mandate that all future routing equipment manufactured will include back doors for law enforcement. Like in CALEA mandates for telephone switching equipment, such back doors require no warrant to activate, and hence can be secretly enabled at will. Some vendors have already eagerly embraced CALEA inspired backdoors to internet routing equipment in anticipation of future intercept mandates, thereby already compromising the integrity and security their current and future customers.
I strongly suspect the telcos cut a deal with the NSA to help install surveillance of all Internet traffic in exchange for political pressure to permit the re-conglomeration of the fractured Ma Bell. My only question is, why do they need to tap the router, if they already have the traffic? It seems redundant.
Posts: 3293 | Registered: Jul 2002
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Huh. A thread with a title that doesn't exactly match its contents.
I'm sure you really meant, "FBI wants Congress to require secretly activated, warrantless backdoors in all routers." Maybe now you can give Mrs.M the same benefit of the doubt.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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You should have seen my reaction to this two years ago, when Congress initially announced that they were going to require us to buy our OWN new routers and modify our own routing tables to comply with their surveillance techniques. At that time, they were attempting to extend CALEA -- which already applies to ISPs, so keep in mind that any traffic you send over a corporate ISP is already open to monitoring -- to educational institutions and any organization that did NAT, without even funding that mandate.
I'm very, very glad that a court case has recently found this unnecessary.
But, again, let me make this clear: ISPs are already required to have secret, warrantless backdoors in their routers, and the FBI is "only" asking that Congress mandate that all router manufacturers add these backdoors for their use. Probably because they could not legally require -- according to federal court -- that the changeover be performed and funded by everyone using NAT. By instead requiring the change in all new equipment, they'll get the same result in a matter of years, anyway, unless people just stop upgrading or replacing equipment.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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