Alex Fitzpatrick2013-04-29 20:40:21 UTC
Government officials are working on legislation that would financially penalize email, social media, Internet phone and online chat companies that refuse to comply with court wiretap orders, according to a report.
The proposal would allow courts to levy fines "starting at tens of thousands of dollars" upon such uncooperative companies, according to the Washington Post citing "persons who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations." The fines would then increase on an exponential scale after three months of noncompliance.
Companies targeted by the proposal, such as Facebook and Google, would be tasked with developing their own procedures for handing over the requested data — perhaps email exchanges, chat records or IP addresses — to law enforcement.
Law enforcement has for nearly two decades used the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, or CALEA, to compel phone companies and Internet providers to allow them to snoop on customers' telephone and Internet traffic and the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, or ECPA, to request access to users' stored emails and other electronic communications.
CALEA in particular, however, has become decreasingly useful to investigators as digital communications providers have been shifting from server-based to cloud storage and using end-to-end encryption on data transfers. And while data from Google, Twitter and other companies shows government requests for user data are steadily rising, not all government data requests are granted. Some companies have their own internal vetting process for deciding whether to comply with such requests and sometimes choose not to comply. Smaller companies say they lack the manpower to comply.
The proposal would amend CALEA only slightly, establishing that voice-over-IP companies are not exempt from wiretap requirements. Fines issued under the proposal would be levied through an amendment to the 1968 Wiretap Act.
The report of the proposal comes just a month after an FBI general counsel publicly argued the bureau should be able to wiretap email and online chat networks in order to conduct timely investigations in the digital era.
Privacy advocates, however, are already raising concerns over this reported wiretapping proposal. Joe Hall, Senior Staff Technologist at the Center for Democracy and Technology, argued that requiring companies to compromise their own encryption methods would make customers' data vulnerable to hackers.
"A wiretapping mandate is a vulnerability mandate," said Hall in an emailed statement. "The unintended consequences of this proposal are profound. At the very time when the nation is concerned about cybersecurty, the FBI proposal has the potential to make our communications less secure. Once you build a wiretap capability into products and services, the bad guys will find a way to use it."
Should social media companies be forced to allow law enforcement wiretapping? Share your thoughts in the comments.
Image via iStockphoto, pkfawcett
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