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Telephoney bill passes. From 2600
DIGITAL TELEPHONY PASSES
from 2600, Winter 1994-1995
In the waning minutes of the 102nd Congress - 10:30 pm on a
Friday night, on the day before they went out of session,
Congress approved the law enforcement takeover of the nation's
(and the world's, really) phone system to make surveillance
easier for themselves. Welcome to the future of communications
and don't forget to smile when you bend over, otherwise Big
Brother may paddle you also.
So What's the Bill All About?
-----------------------------
If you liked Clipper, you'll love this new law. It requires that
all telecommunications providers - big and small phone companies
and anyone else who wants to provide phone service - redesign
their old and new phone systems with a built-in capability for
Big Brother to have remote surveillance capability. To do this,
it requires that all the telecom standards-setting bodies set
their standards based on the U.S. Department of Justice's
requirements. if the bodies don't do it to the liking of the FBI
and NSA, the Federal Communications Commission can step in and
set the standards themselves. In exchange, the telephone
companies got a whopping $500,000,000 dollars in taxpayer money
(yours and mine) to play with.
Another section of the bill requires that the phone companies buy
as much equipment as requested by the FBI to ensure that they
will have enough ports to jack into so they can tap in. New
York's figures ought to be interesting.
There are several provisions that you hackers and phreaks should
be interested in. As a "privacy protection" section, it is now
illegal to listen in with a scanner on cordless telephones.
A "technical amendment" to the Electronic Communications Privacy
Act now makes it perfectly legal for system operators to listen
in on all electronic communications. No more worrying about
those annoying disclaimers that if you logon to a particular
computer, you are waiving your right to be left in private.
And finally, for you cellular hackers out there, beware - new
amendments to 18 USC 1029 (that's the access control fraud law
for you uninitiated out there) makes it illegal to possess
intending to use, sell, or give a cell phone that has been
modified to make free calls or to traffic serial numbers, PINs,
or the such.
What About the "Great Privacy
Provisions in the Bill?
-----------------------------
In exchange for the most draconian provisions since the 1789
Alien and Sedition Act or the 1940 Smith Act, the DOJ was kind
enough to give us a few trivial privacy provisions. Unlike the
glowing statements of certain self-interested trojan horse public
interest groups, these really do very little for privacy.
There are limits of accessing of transaction records for online
services, however, most of the material is available via a
subpoena that any government bureaucrat can ask for. For the
text of communications, a warrant is required but it is not a
standard warrant.
Now it's also illegal to listen in on cordless telephones without
a warrant. Does anyone really believe that with over 100 million
scanners out there that this provides any meaningful privacy
protection? As long as the government tries to prevent the
dissemination of cryptography, we cannot really expect meaningful
communications privacy over wireless systems.
Why Did it Pass?
----------------
To put it bluntly, we were sold down the river. The FBI, with
additional support from the CIA, the NSA, the Naval Intelligence,
lobbied heavily for the bill. FBI Director Freeh met personally
with almost all of Congress. When the final votes were taken, no
recorded votes were tallied so there are no fingerprints for
angry constituents.
The phone companies took the half billion and rolled over without
a whimper. Oh, sure they carped a bit about how much more it
would cost but they were really setting the stage to get more
money from the public tit in three years when the first money
dried up.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, once a proud, principled
group dedicated to civil liberties, is now funded completely by
corporations such as AT&T, Bell Atlantic, MCI, and IBM. They
followed the wishes of their corporate masters and cut a deal,
then claimed victory for trivial privacy protections. At the
last minute, EFF co-founder John Perry Barlow called Senator
Malcolm Wallop, who was planning to kill the bill, and asked him
to allow the bill to pass. Barlow said in comments on The Well
that he wasn't proud of what he did but that it "was the price of
growing up". As if selling one's sould to Satan was a sign of
maturity. The FBI told Senators' aides who were concerned about
the bill after the public campaign organized by EPIC and Voters
Telecom Watch, that "EFF supported the bill so there are no
privacy concerns." Many people are still wondering if the lead
content in the water fountains at their fancy new downtown
offices had been checked lately.
What To Look Forward To Now?
Even before this bill passed, FBI Director Louis Freeh suggested
that if the Clipper Chip didn't become as widely successful as
the NSA and FBI would like, he would come back to Congress and
ask for a ban of all cryptography that they don't keep the keys
for. Already a bill was introduced last month that would give
the NSA and FBI significant roles in setting all new crypto
standards.
It doesn't seem terribly unlikely that next year, maybe the year
following, we'll see another push on the hill by the FBI in the
guise of a "technical amendment" to extend this bill to all
online services. After all, we all know that there are a lot of
nasty, dirty, dangerous people using Usenet, IRC, and gopher and
shouldn't they be tapped like everyone else?
Anyway, don't just take my word or anyone else's for it, read the
bill yourself. You can get a copy via ftp/wais/gopher/www from
cpsr.org /cpsr/privacy/communications/wiretap/hr4922_final.txt.
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