Fergie's Tech Blog

FBI Floats Wide-Ranging Wiretap Proposal

Grant Gross writes on InfoWorld:

Foreign Internet service and applications providers would be required to base inside the country the servers they use for U.S. customers, under a proposal from the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ).

The DOJ and its U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) division are taking that message to the U.S. Congress and asking lawmakers for a broad rewrite of U.S. wiretapping rules.

However, some members of Congress have ripped into the Chinese government for a similar law requiring Internet providers to locate their servers inside its borders.

U.S. lawmakers have criticized the Chinese law because it allows the government to censor and monitor Internet traffic. The DOJ proposal, which would amend a 1994 telephone wiretapping law called the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), aims to allow the U.S. government easier access to servers so it, too, can monitor communications.

The proposed law, not yet introduced in Congress, would likely set off an arms race in which other countries that want to conduct online surveillance require U.S. companies such as Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp. to locate servers inside their borders, said John Morris, director of the Internet Standards, Technology and Policy Project at the Center for Democracy and Technology, a civil liberties group.

posted by Fergie @ 9/14/2006 03:42:00 PM