Wendy Grossman's
net.wars column this week is all about how security things that work just fine in the traditional PSTN don't exactly work in the new VOIP world. She links to a truly fascinating paper by a selection of the Internet's great and good who explain how wire-taps are almost impossible in the VOIP world (
PDF).
As she explains, the desire for network security (i.e. stopping hackers) comes up against the desire to listen to/monitor activity of criminals, terrorists and so on. Unfortunately for the would be monitorers the paper shows that what they want is hard to provide because of the virtualization and distributed nature of the internet and, even where it is possible, the problem of doing so without opening large holes that could potentially allow others than the designated authorities to tap in.
Of course this is presented primarily as a problem for the US government but it is of course a far worse problem for more repressive states such as the PRC, despite their attempts to comtrol things and despite their generally greater control of their ISPs.
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