convore.json/groups/socal-martial-law-alerts/debate-over-internet-backdoors-heats-up-in-congress-and-in-court/messages.json

[{"user_id": 11626, "stars": [], "topic_id": 6643, "date_created": 1297901477.8689439, "message": "Two hearings tomorrow\u2014one in court and one in Congress\u2014will highlight the brewing debate over whether Congress should expand federal surveillance laws to force Internet communications service providers like Facebook, Google and Skype to build technical backdoors into their systems to enable government wiretapping.\r\n\r\n\u2022 First, at 10:00 AM EST on Capitol Hill, the House Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing entitled \u201dGoing Dark: Lawful Electronic Surveillance in the Face of New Technologies\u201d, where law enforcement representatives are expected to make their case for expanded Internet wiretapping capabilities.\r\n\r\n\u2022 Then, at 1:30 PST in San Francisco, EFF Staff Attorney Jennifer Lynch will argue in federal court for an end to the government\u2019s stalling on the release of documents about the government's Internet surveillance plan that EFF is seeking under the Freedom of Information Act.\r\n\r\nWe filed that FOIA lawsuit last fall, shortly after the New York Times first revealed the FBI\u2019s push to convince Congress to expand \u201cCALEA\u201d\u2014the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act of 1994\u2014to require online communications service providers to redesign their systems to accommodate the government\u2019s interception of internet communications. As we\u2019ve said before, EFF thinks that any expansion of CALEA would be the very definition of a bad idea, an \u201canti-privacy, anti-security, anti-innovation solution in search of a problem.\u201d\r\n\r\nThe exact contours of the forthcoming proposal are unclear\u2014the White House, the Justice Department and various agencies are apparently still internally haggling over what the Administration\u2019s position is. However, the FBI\u2019s wish list as reported in the New York Times is dangerously expansive:\r\n\r\n    Essentially, officials want Congress to require all services that enable communications \u2014 including encrypted e-mail transmitters like BlackBerry, social networking Web sites like Facebook and software that allows direct \u201cpeer to peer\u201d messaging like Skype \u2014 to be technically capable of complying if served with a wiretap order. The mandate would include being able to intercept and unscramble encrypted messages.\r\n\r\nHopefully, the FBI\u2019s top lawyer Valerie Caproni\u2014the primary source for the Times\u2019 reporting\u2014will give more specifics about the forthcoming proposal in tomorrow morning\u2019s Congressional hearing, as she is one of two law enforcement representatives there to plead the government\u2019s case. Thankfully, the third witness will be renowned security and surveillance expert Dr. Susan Landau, who will be sounding alarms about the security risks posed by building wiretap-ability into our communications services.\r\n\r\nIronically, the very same morning that the Justice Department will testify to Congress on the issue of Internet wiretapping, it will also argue in court that the issue is not of such public concern as to warrant expedited release of CALEA-related documents in response to EFF\u2019s FOIA lawsuit. The government says it won\u2019t be able to release the documents that EFF is entitled to until August of 2012, by which time the debate over CALEA may have already ended; we will be asking the court to order the documents released within ten days, so that Congress and the public are fully informed on this critical and time-sensitive issue.\r\n\r\nAs tomorrow\u2019s two hearings makes clear, the fight over the future of wiretapping on the Internet is just beginning. So stay tuned to the Deeplinks Blog to hear about the results of both hearings, as we continue to try to get to the bottom of the FBI\u2019s plan to turn our Internet into their surveillance network.\r\n\r\nhttps://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/02/congress-and-court-long-simmering-debate-over", "group_id": 3920, "id": 126984}]