Counterterrorism Blog

One of the stranger sides to the unfolding Eliot Spitzer story is that he was caught by a wiretap in conjunction with some irregular banking activity. This seems an exceptionally quaint way to be caught out in 2008 and doesn’t really say much for the New York Governors criminal skill-set. Traditional wiretapping has seemingly become a thing of the past (although clearly useful in catching dangerous high-end prostitution networks). The Economist ran a piece last week entitled ‘bugging the cloud’ highlighting the virtual impossibility of tracing calls that use VoIP and especially Skype. The article notes that the FBI is pushing Skype to build a special back-door that allows for lawful-intercept but so far this hasn’t happened. This is a useful signpost as Skype’s history is connected to that of Kazaa (the P2P file sharing software) through its founders. Kazaa evades certain legal requirements as its holding company (Sharman networks) is based in Vanuatu --a small Island nation in the South Pacific. It doesn’t seem too much of a leap to imagine VoIP companies or virtual worlds similarly headquartered in Vanuatu seeking to evade regulation. Meanwhile the programmer who developed ‘Pretty Good Privacy’ is developing a free VoIP product called Zfone, which could be wholly wiretap proof. Most virtual worlds now also have VoIP built into them so if Skype is a current problem, it does stretch the mind to wonder how the intelligence community is going to keep up with encrypted VoIP communications in a virtual world.

The tension between technological innovation and government attempts to frame a legislative and operational response seems at times to be at breaking point. Governments do bite-back from time to time but this often appears to be piecemeal. The reported request from the Pentagon for Google to take down street-views of its military bases seems reasonable but it only works because Google is in the USA. But what about, EveryScape? A recently launched online tool that ‘takes you through the doors of the world’s cities’. This would appear to be of more use to a potential attacker than Google Street View but there have, as yet, been no attempts to limit its scope. So how can government frame a response to technological innovation, which is straining and breaking traditional law enforcement activity? There does at least seem to be a straightforward legislative case for western governments mandating that VoIP technology companies, based within their jurisdictions, comply with official requests to build in appropriate technical measures so lawful intercept can be conducted. This would blunt the potential problems associated with Skype and Zfone. In the case of visual products such as Everyscape or Google Street View this gets a little harder but the principle that analytical co-operation should be built into their systems should be maintained. This still leaves the problems of Pacific Islands being used as jurisdictional bases but for now this remains a seemingly inevitable possibility rather than current fact -- much like the New York Governors resignation.