Oh big brother, where art thou?
Oh, there you are:
Broadband providers and Internet phone companies will have to pick up the tab for the cost of building in mandatory wiretap access for police surveillance, federal regulators ruled Wednesday.
The Federal Communications Commission voted unanimously to levy what likely will amount to wiretapping taxes on companies, municipalities and universities, saying it would create an incentive for them to keep costs down and that it was necessary to fight the war on terror. Universities have estimated their cost to be about $7 billion.
The canaries are dead, ladies and gentlemen.
May 5th, 2006 at 7:26 am
The wire tap provisions have been in the law for several years.
The thing that is new is that the service providers have to pay for it. Translated, the customer has to pay for it. Not really any different than the citizen paying for it through taxes, just makes it inconvinient for the service provider.
May 5th, 2006 at 8:53 am
Forgot the $100 tax refund for gas the Republicans are proposing, why not just give everyone in America a gallon of vaseline.
May 5th, 2006 at 1:21 pm
Encryption. Start using it. Make sure everyone you know uses it. Make it so ubiquitous that the gov can’t outlaw it. Start by encrypting your email. Enable ssl on your web sites.
If all the traffic is encrypted, wiretaps become moot. Start using encryption and soon network effects kick in and it will snowball. We can have an end-to-end encrypted net if we want it.