According to a legislative measure suggested and supported by the Australian IT Minister, Helen Coonan, VoIP service providers in kangaroo’s land will have to keep interception channels open for law enforcement.

The initiative which inserts in a federal government action to review the Telecommunication Act, is in line with the U.S. Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), where a specific clause was introduced in order to extend regulation to VoIP services.

On one hand this would be undoubtedly helpful for police and for IT investigators but on the other, experts and professionals in IT Security agree on the point that permanently open interception channels will expose users privacy to the treat of crackers or to the possibility that third-party companies could release private information...

The necessity to open interception channels, comes from the fact thet VoIP calls are more difficult to track than traditional ones, because of the little control providers have over VoIP calls, but VoIP wiretapping requires law enforcement to have access to both custumer data from the VoIP providers and real-time tracking of calls routed across the internet. The problem is that enforcing wiretapping regulation, will bring many other  circumstances where users could be digitally monitored.

From an economic point of view the implication will be that small VoIP companies will be wiped off because most of them won’t afford the costs of implementing wiretapping capabilities. Indeed, the fee that providers will have to pay to third party companies that should set up a CALEA solution, is close to $100.000, and monthly payments for each interception will graze $15.000…

Quite a good business isn’t it? But there’s more:

Earlier this year the wiretapping of the Greek Vodafone cellular network provoked a leak of news that involved the Greek Premier as well. The leak came from software installed in the switches to enable the lawful intercept of traffic, that was then hijacked. The hacking procedure used in this occasion was quite simple and it mirrors what could happen if VoIP interception channels will be permanently open.

Are investigations on VoIP calls worth the danger to be constantly peeped, risking the theft of users personal information ? Given the client side nature of the VoIP system such Skype which are adopting peer-to-peer technologies ,how do you think the information would be wiretapped? At your client side of course which means that simply speaking, the introduction of a key escrow function or of a direct wiretapping (before the client encrypts the data), transforms your favorite VoIP client in a Sub-Seven kind of trojan, ready to be hijacked by the first smart kid out there... 

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