[Asterisk-Users] FCC Rules VoIP Must Be Tappable

[Steven P. Donegan]

Wolfgang S. Rupprecht wrote:

>>Me raises his hand.
>>    
>>
>>>All in favor of IAX with native encrypted tunneling say Aye :-)
>>>Now I'm likely in the target rings of Big Brother :-)
>>>      
>>>
>
>If the voice data passed through a service provider run asterisk
>system, I'd imagine they'd just get a court order to force IAX
>encryption to be turned off.  (Or try to pull some strings if the
>service provider was in a foreign country.)
>
>The question I have of this ruling is does this make end-to-End RTP
>encryption illegal?  Ditto for re-invites that cut out all the
>middlemen?  How are they planning in getting the two endpoints to stop
>encrypting things without tipping off the same two endpoints?  What
>about VPN tunnels?  Are they illegal now by the same logic?
>
>-wolfgang
>  
>
Well, making VPN tunnels illegal will likely be beyond the US system - 
it would also effectively kill SSL and secure web transactions. And that 
will not fly with the US public (or likely anyone else either). My silly 
'vote' request was a momentary point of humor. For 'providers' the local 
country governments will of course have whatever insane/paranoid levels 
of control over local providers that they wish. Sadly this will impact 
the 'bad guys'  very little. Anyone can simply open a VPN of any type - 
PPTP/IPSEC/IP-tunnel(ok, not a VPN, but 'hides' the ports involved a bit).

So, assuming this ruling stands - which I think has a 50/50 chance - the 
big lads (Vonage stands out) will likely have to co-operate. Any of the 
rest of us who either provide free portals/exchanges are exempt in the 
wording of the current proposal.

However - more to the Asterisk list context - I do believe the 
capability, within SIP or IAX contexts, to specify SSL or IPSEC or (?) 
encapsulation would be a good thing.