Vote scheduled for Net wiretap protocols

While opponents of the proposal predicted its defeat, they nevertheless sent a letter to the task force earlier this week urging it not to adopt new protocols or modify existing protocols to make Internet wiretapping easier. "We believe that such a development would harm network security, result in more illegal activities, diminish users' privacy, stifle innovation and impose significant costs on developers of communications," said the letter signed by leading computer security, cryptography and legal experts.

"At the same time, it is likely that Internet surveillance protocols would provide little or no real benefit for law enforcement," the letter said.

At issue is whether standards such as Internet Protocol (IP) and voice over IP are covered under the federal wiretapping law known as CALEA. The law requires the operators of digital phone networks to design wiretap capabilities into those networks. The law appears to specifically exclude the Internet, but law enforcement and privacy groups differ over what statutory requirements if any the law proscribes for computer networks.

"The U.S. Congress, when enacting CALEA, specifically rejected the inclusion of computer networks in the statutory mandate," opponents told the task force in their letter.

Law enforcement officials countered that Internet service providers (ISPs) still have a statutory requirement to comply with court-ordered wiretap requests under pre-CALEA federal laws.

Austin Hill, founder of Zero-Knowledge Systems and author of the letter to the task force, said there are no legal requirements for the task force to develop surveillance protocols for the Internet. He noted that the task force recently voted to add encryption into the IPv6 protocol despite U.S. and international export controls.

The letter was signed by U.S. computer security experts, ISPs and groups like IEEE-USA.

The task force's Internet wiretap debate will be led by Scott Bradner of Harvard University and Jeff Schiller of MIT.