FCC Says Net Phone Lines Can Be Tapped

L33tdawg: Thanks to kewl for the heads-up on this story.

Internet phone systems, seen as the wave of the future in telecommunications, must be set up in such a way that conversations can be monitored by police and intelligence agencies, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (news - web sites) said in a tentative ruling on Wednesday.

By a vote of 5-0, the FCC (news - web sites) said "Voice over Internet Protocol," or VoIP, providers should be subject to the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), which ensures that law enforcers will be able to keep up with changing communications technologies.

The law does not apply to Internet-based communications but VoIP providers such as Vonage must comply because they are likely to replace much traditional phone service, the commission said.

The Justice Department (news - web sites), FBI (news - web sites) and Drug Enforcement Administration have argued that they must be able to monitor suspicious calls no matter how they are made and have pushed the FCC to adopt rules so they will always have access.

Technology advocates have worried that the fast-growing service, which promises to slash costs by routing phone calls over the Internet, could be harmed by excessive regulation.

The ruling does not affect other pending regulatory questions surrounding VoIP service, such as how it should be taxed, FCC Chairman Michael Powell said.

"Our tentative conclusion, while correct, is expressly limited to the requirements of the CALEA statute and does not indicate a willingness on my part to find that VoIP services are telecommunications services," Powell said at a commission meeting.

Several commissioners said this attempt to avoid larger regulatory questions weakened the legal argument underpinning the ruling, though they all voted to support it.

"There are less roundabout ways to achieve this result than the collection of tentative conclusions we offer here, and there are better ways to build a system that will guarantee judicial approval," said Commissioner Michael Copps, a Democrat.

The ruling does not apply to "non-managed" VoIP services like Skype, which have more in common with file-trading networks like Kazaa than traditional phone networks.

Skype offers "peer to peer" software that allows users to talk directly with each other rather than going through pathways set up by the carrier.