Phone interception law, Was: Re: Gmail phone

[Leigh Honeywell]

On 10-12-01 09:54 PM, Ilija Milicevic wrote:
> I got VoIP set up through voip.ms <http://voip.ms> (Canadian provider).
> Costs about 1c per minute anywhere in North America. I use it on a
> regular basis and have used it in Europe and South America (with Linphone). 
> We are probably just gonna port our pots number over to that service and
> not bother with POTS when we move.
> Just make sure you go through Canadian servers (as voip.ms
> <http://voip.ms> also has some US and [even worse] UK servers) unless
> you don't mind the DHS or the MI5 routinely snooping your calls. You can
> be pretty sure Google's US servers get all of their traffic forwarded to
> the DHS.

Legally speaking, calling from a US voip provider to /within/ the US is
more legally protected than calling from a Canadian voip provider to the
US.  Warrantless wiretapping issues aside, the DHS is supposed to get a
warrant for within-the-US communications but has never needed one to tap
communications between the US and other countries.

That said, it's mostly moot because most ostensibly "Canadian" VOIP
providers use US termination for US calls (especially if you're only
paying 1c/minute for it).  Unlimitel.ca is an exception - there are
diagrams of how their network is set up on their site, and they use
Canadian termination (which, again, puts you at /more/ risk for
surveillance if you're calling the US).

As for making calls within Canada, to date I've not heard of widespread
abuses of wiretap functionality, but as my friend Matt Blaze said [0],
we should

	Stop calling eavesdropping mechanisms "lawful intercept".
	Whether intercepts are lawful isn't a property of the interface.

I'm pretty damn paranoid and basically assume all phone conversations
are being intercepted... but you should at least know what laws are on
the books (and whether or not they are followed).  All this to say: if
you're calling the US, assume someone's listening :)

-Leigh

[0] http://twitter.com/#!/mattblaze/status/9642930723