Technologists assail federal Net-tapping rules

TECHNOLOGISTS ASSAIL FEDERAL NET-TAPPING RULES
[SOURCE: C-Net|News.com, AUTHOR: Anne Broache and Declan McCullagh]
Federal regulations saying that police must be able to tap into Internet phone conversations with ease are coming under renewed attack from academics, engineers and one of the Net's founding fathers. A 21-page study to be released today says it's impossible for the government to expect all products that use voice over Internet protocol, or VoIP, to comply with the Federal Communications Commission's September 2005 requirement mandating wiretapping backdoors for government surveillance. That requirement is backed by the Bush administration. The study, organized by the Information Technology Association of America, says that because VoIP relies on a fundamentally different network architecture from that of traditional phone lines, such a mandate would pose "enormous costs" to the industry and could even introduce significant security risks. The nine contributors included Vint Cerf, Google's chief Internet evangelist and one of the Net's founding fathers; Steven Bellovin and Matt Blaze, both prominent computer security professors who specialize in security; Clinton Brooks, a former National Security Agency official; and engineers from Sun Microsystems and Intel.
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