One
of the speakers at today�s
VoIP Developer Conference
in San Jose so eloquently repeated the old adage that when you�re a
hammer, everything looks like a nail. At the conclusion of the event, I
learned that the FCC voted for proposed rules that would require Internet
telephony service providers, or ITSPs (news
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alert) to make sure their equipment allows police wiretaps.
I
read the story disbelief. Wiretaps? Today at the show, there were over
500 attendees learning how they can build the next generation of VoIP
devices and guess what? Most of these solutions won�t have wires. Yes,
WiFi (news
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alert) telephony is the future of VoIP.
(news
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alert) Worse yet, there are sessions at the conference focusing on
peer to peer products and these sessions attracted a healthy number of
developers who are working on such applications. We all know
Skype (news
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alert) is a peer-to-peer VoIP software application that doesn�t
requite a central service provider. The government keeps moving forward
as they must but regulating VoIP is like pushing wind.
Yesterday�s keynote speaker, Michael Stanford,
Intel�s (news
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alert -
quote) Technology Strategist mentioned that Skype has 18 million
users, a tremendous number. We all know that there is no way to
centrally monitor the VoIP calls between Skype users. It is that simple.
So even though WiFi telephony calls may pass over the public Internet,
you won�t have a central place where you can tap into them.
Soon, we will see widespread adoption of encrypted VoIP. Security is
paramount in communications and legitimate users need this technology.
The government may not even be aware that a new class of
product is about to surface that will natively support peer-to-peer VoIP
calls. As this technology evolves, there will be no service providers to
work with.
The
solution of course is to capture all packets on the Internet, in the
hope that you will ferret out the ones you need later with a court
order. This obviously has the privacy advocates going crazy. Will this
ever happen? I am not sure but I expect to see the feds at next year�s
VoIP Developer Conference.