New Spy Tools From Cisco--For Good Or Evil?
from the depends-on-how-you-look-at-it dept
Declan McCullough is talking with someone from Cisco who worked on their new "lawful interception" capability that would let authorities easily eavesdrop on communications that go over Cisco equipment. McCullough points out that some of the technology can limit the excess info that authorities get when doing surveillance - but it also makes it easy for surveillance to occur with no audit trail whatsoever making sure that the surveillance is following the law. When he asks the Cisco guy about that idea, the response is that such an audit trail probably wouldn't be possible with the current technology - which isn't really the question being asked. The question is why they didn't bother to put such technology into the technology.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
what a lovely thought...
Did the Feds even consider why the originial engineers left this sort of feature out? You do know that cisco use to pride themselves on this fact, don't you.
The Japapnese tried *exactly* this sort of thing with their Cell phones. Within a week recordings surfaced of politicians conversing with police officials (just politicians of another sort). It was all quite embarassing.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]