Lighting the dark: Must you make your application wiretap-able?
Law enforcement has a problem, and you may be part of it.
If your company makes an Internet application that enables its users to communicate with each other and you do not have a way to hand over those communications in real time to law enforcement, then you are part of the problem. If one grants that there is a problem, as I do, the question becomes: "Is the solution worse than the problem?"
The U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary recently held a hearing on the general problems faced by law enforcement in today's Internet. They called the hearing "Going Dark: Lawful Electronic Surveillance in the Face of New Technologies." During the hearing, FBI General Counsel Valerie Caproni clearly described the problems faced by law enforcement, noting that not all telecommunications providers were able to quickly meet their obligations under the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA). But she focused most of her testimony on the problem that law enforcement has in getting real-time communication among users of modern Internet applications.
