Dear Internet Activist, The Internet is facing one of its gravest threats in years. Now is the time to make your voice heard in Washington. On Tuesday, July 20, the Senate Commerce Committee will consider whether to impose wiretap design mandates on Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) services. This has profound implications for the future of the Internet. Tell your Senator not to impose FBI wiretap mandates on VOIP services and the Internet! What's Going On The Senate Commerce Committee has before it S. 2281, introduced by Sen. John Sununu (R-NH). It is a broad bill on VOIP and is generally deregulatory. CDT has learned that several Senators are planning amendments that would extend to VOIP services the wiretap design requirements of "CALEA." CALEA is the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act of 1994. It required traditional phone companies to build into their switches various capabilities so phone calls can be easily wiretapped. When Congress passed CALEA, it explicitly excluded the Internet from the scope of these surveillance mandates. As implemented, CALEA has proven to be a costly design mandate. The FBI used the law to get capabilities it never used to have in the traditional phone system. CALEA has become a straightjacket, and is especially ill-suited to the Internet. Extending CALEA to VOIP and the Internet would be bad for innovation, cost, privacy and security. Background VOIP is an exciting new technology that uses the Internet for voice communications, offering significant savings on long distance calls and allowing services to be combined in innovative ways. Both start-ups and mainstream telephone companies are looking to VOIP to offer businesses and ordinary users flexibility and costs savings. Law enforcement should be able to intercept Internet communications with an appropriate court order. In fact, such communications can already be "tapped" and service providers are voluntarily cooperating with the FBI -- but that isn't good enough for the FBI. The FBI wants to actually control the design of the technology. Given the FBI's attitude towards technology, this could mean that the FBI would force service providers to redesign the Internet so that looks just like the phone system, wiping out the benefits of innovation. CDT testimony on S. 2281: http://www.cdt.org/testimony/20040416dempsey.shtml CDT's CALEA VOIP page: http://www.cdt.org/digi_tele/voip.shtml What You Can Do - Call Your Senator TODAY Your Senator is on the Senate Commerce Committee! Call Sen. Kerry at (202)224-2742. Ask for the staffer who handles Commerce Committee issues. Tell the person who answers the phone that you oppose extending CALEA's wiretap mandates to Voice Over IP and Internet services. Be polite - flaming is a turn-off. Use these words if you feel tongue-tied: Staffer : Hello, Sen. Kerry's office. You: Hi, I'm a constituent and I am calling about the Sununu bill in the Commerce Committee. Please tell the Senator to oppose any amendment extending CALEA to Voice Over IP and other Internet services. The Internet should not be designed by the FBI. Please urge my Senator to oppose any amendments to the Sununu bill that would require VOIP to meet law enforcement specifications. I support law enforcement but I oppose designing the Internet to be wiretap- friendly. CALEA would be a disaster for the Internet. Staffer: I'll tell the Senator. Thanks, bye! Tell Others Tell your family and friends to call their Senator as well. You can refer them to this URL: http://www.cdt.org/action/voip/ so they can look up their Senators' phone numbers. Feel free to include links to that page in blogs as well. Sample Text for a Blog: The Senate Commerce Committee may decide on Tuesday, July 20, whether to extend to VOIP and the Internet the FBI design mandates contained in a law called the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA). That law required traditional phone companies to meet certain design standards to allow phone calls to be wiretapped easily, but when it was passed in 1994 Congress recognized the unique architecture of the Internet and explicitly excluded the Internet from the scope of its surveillance design mandates. Congress should not extend CALEA to VOIP and the Internet -- it would be bad for innovation, cost, privacy and security. Everyone should tell their Senator that CALEA is a straightjacket, ill-suited to the Internet. While there may be legitimate law enforcement concerns with regard to wiretapping the Internet, they must be addressed in a way appropriate to the Internet. See http://www.cdt.org/ action/voip/ for more information. -- Michael Clark, Grassroots Webmaster mclark@cdt.org PGP Key available on keyservers Center for Democracy and Technology 1634 Eye Street NW, Suite 1100 Washington, DC 20006 http://www.cdt.org/ voice: 202-637-9800 fax: 202-637-0968 ========== HURIDOCS-Tech listserv ========== Send mail intended for the list to <huridocs-tech@hrea.org>. Archives of the list can be found at: http://www.hrea.org/lists/huridocs-tech/markup/maillist.php To subscribe to the list, send a message to <majordomo@hrea.org>, with the following text in the message: subscribe huridocs-tech To unsubscribe from the list, send a message to <majordomo@hrea.org>, with the following text in the message: unsubscribe huridocs-tech If you have problems (un)subscribing, contact <owner-huridocs-tech@hrea.org>.
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