Articles

FBI Plan To Make Online Wiretaps Easier Draws Fire

Marilyn Geewax, AJC Staff
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
April 12, 2003

WASHINGTON -- An FBI proposal to make it easier for the government to wiretap high-speed Internet communications is drawing criticism from businesses and privacy experts who fear it could stifle technological innovation and allow too much monitoring of online conversations.

The FBI's present authority to tap phone calls and review e-mails and instant messages is contingent on acquiring a court order. Phone calls made via Internet connections, an increasingly common technology, are more difficult to tap.

Now law enforcement agencies, arguing that their ability to track terrorists and other criminals is at stake, have asked the Federal Communications Commission to force providers of high-speed Internet access to retool their networks to make government eavesdropping easier Ñ while passing the costs along to Internet users.

On Monday, the FCC closed its 30-day comment period on the FBI request, amid a raging debate over whether there would be safeguards to prevent the government from intercepting online communications between innocent parties.

The FBI doesn't just want to subpoena suspicious communications after they have been sent, but rather to monitor instant messages and e-mails as they are being exchanged, according to Dave Baker, vice president for public policy at EarthLink, a major Internet service provider based in Atlanta.

"We have a long history of cooperating with law enforcement," Baker said, but the proposed changes would expand police powers by greatly enhancing "the ability to get real-time intercepts."

That could lead to far more police surveillance of the Internet, he predicted. "It's the camel's nose under the tent," he said.

Baker said he had no estimate of what the changes would cost, but it would not be trivial. "At the very least, you would be driving up costs ... and compromising innovation," he said.

"This would radically change how the Internet develops," said John Morris, staff counsel for the Center for Democracy and Technology, a public interest group based in Washington. "If the FBI has its way, the companies themselves will go overseas because tech innovation will leave the United States."

The FBI, the Justice Department and the Drug Enforcement Administration filed a petition last month asking the FCC to require a re-engineering of broadband networks to allow for easier eavesdropping.

In addition, the federal law enforcement agencies want the FCC to allow the Internet companies to pass along to consumers any higher costs.

Technological problems

The FBI says it simply wants to update its wiretapping capabilities to keep up with new methods of communication.

Michael Clifford, section chief in charge of the FBI's wiretap implementation efforts, issued a statement saying that "nothing in the petition can be interpreted as a request for expanding the scope of law enforcement's authority to conduct electronic surveillance."

The FBI just wants "to ensure compliance [with existing law] and institute a cost-recovery mechanism so neither the industry nor individual law enforcement agencies bear the entire burden of meeting the responsibilities," the agency said.

The Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, which requires telephone companies to rewire their networks to facilitate court-ordered wiretaps, was enacted in 1994.

A decade later, a technological revolution is allowing computer users to make phone calls through Internet connections and broadband services rather than by traditional phone lines.

While only about 1 percent of phone calls are being made via the Internet, many experts believe the number will soar in the coming decade because VoIP Ñ Voice over Internet Protocol Ñ is cheaper than traditional service.

For law enforcement, the problem is that on the Internet, voice signals are turned into packets of data that are indistinguishable from other data packets that may be carrying instructions for browsing the Web or sending e-mail.

The law enforcement agencies want communications providers to make it easier to identify which packets are which, making it simpler to tap those involving phone conversations. They also want help decoding data that has been encrypted.

The FCC already is working to set rules for Internet telephony. In general, FCC Chairman Michael Powell has been arguing for a light touch by regulators to encourage the development of low-cost Internet-based phone calls.

"Regulatory medicine can be a poison," he said last year at a meeting on Internet telephony.

But Powell also has said he wants to help prevent the Internet from becoming an unregulated safe haven for terrorists.

Some people in the tech world contend the FBI's request is not unreasonable. Scott McNealy, chief executive of Sun Microsystems, said in a recent interview that high-tech companies should be more willing to help police monitor communications between potential terrorists and other criminals.

"Absolute anonymity breeds irresponsibility," McNealy said. "I'm all in favor of making life harder for the bad guys."

Reprinted with permission from The Atlanta Journal and The Atlanta Constitution. Further reproduction, retransmission or distribution of these materials without the prior written consent of The Atlanta Journal and The Atlanta Constitution, and any copyright holder identified in the material's copyright notice, is prohibited.