The Edward Snowden legacy continues. Maine joined Montana last week in passing a new law that bans warrant-less cell phone record seizures.
Maine's new anti-surveillance law is similar to the one that Montana passed in June. The Maine anti-surveillance law requires law enforcement to get a judge-issued warrant before tracking a suspect’s movements and collecting that suspect’s previous data locations. The law varies from Montana’s law, however, in that it also requires that law enforcement notify the person of the surveillance within three days unless the further secrecy can be justified.
The law was set in motion partially because of Snowden’s tipoff to the world about Project PRISM. The federal government secretly seized millions of citizens’ phone data, which included information like routing location, the length of phone calls, as well as subscriber identity numbers, as part of the PRISM project.
With privacy no longer a given for U.S. cell phone users, many have looked for an alternative way to securely call. And there is a way that hasn’t yet been compromised: VoIP.
VoIP uses encryption and travels by data packets, so currently it still cannot be hacked unless the VoIP provider intentionally leaves it unsecure or able to be compromised.
Edward Snowden himself has weighed in on the issue: “Encryption works. Properly implemented strong crypto systems are one of the few things that you can rely on,” he is quoted as having said to The Guardian.
Which is why governments currently are trying to secure access to VoIP calls.
The FBI wants to expand the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act to include Internet-based services, The New York Times reported in May. The law would require VoIP providers to give their users’ information upon request or face a $25,000/day fine for each day of non-compliance. The legislation has not yet entered Congress, so it is still only an FBI proposal.
Until the legislation makes its way through the legal system and passes scrutiny, VoIP at least is the secure way to make calls. With mobile VoIP apps, callers can even use their cell phones while remaining protected. They just need to call through the app, not their cell phone dialer. Skype (News - Alert) on smartphones is an example of how to use VoIP on a cell phone—although there is some question on the Internet about whether Microsoft has capitulated and actually is granting the FBI access to Skype calls. So, users beware.
As for PRISM, it currently is being challenged. The Electronic Privacy Information Center began a petition to get the Supreme Court to declare that government surveillance is a violation of the 4th Amendment, and the Americans Civil Liberties Union also is making legal waves by suing the federal government for privacy violations under the Constitution’s protection of free speech and assembly.
Edited by Rory J. Thompson