Selected ISP Support > Speakeasy > Telcos in hot water

Telcos in hot water

Any call to or from a landline or cell phone results in the telcos getting the info. And the CALEA (fancy acronym for "police state") law and FCC ruling means VOIP providers have to provide a way for law enforcement to undetectably tap VOIP calls.

Big Brother is here. Doesn't matter what you use, he knows what you're doing.

reply to King P
I would assume this is for every call placed, most likely VOIP customers who have there own numbers tied. When they place a call they will be recorded. It also does not matter because if you call someone who uses AT&T your conversation will be recorded. So you do not need two people to do it in order to record a conversation.

So most likely anyone placing a call to one of the companies who have these NSA boxes installed has been at risk. Whether it's VOIP or not. The only one out in the clear right now is Qwest and other small telephone providers.

reply to King P
the most recent (re-)revelation is the release of billing records (not call content ) to the NSA for traffic analysis.
(number called, time of call, duration of call -- same stuff that's usually in your phone bill).

This is a subset of the customer data which is available to every phone company customer service agent -- IMHO a more realistic worry for the average customer is the mistaken release of this data to stalkers by telco customer service workers.

A few months ago there was a fair bit of press coverage of service businesses of dubious legality which claim to be able to get copies of anyone's phone usage details for a fee -- for instance, see »www.wired.com/news/technology/0,70027-0.html