FCC Challenged On Internet Wiretap Laws

from the is-it-necessary dept

Tue, Oct 25th 2005 5:54pm — Mike Masnick

Most people probably saw this one coming a mile away. Starting with new FCC chair Kevin Martin's restatement of how they viewed the internet, where everything involved deferring to law enforcement, to the general sense that the FCC has fallen in love with the quacks like a duck test, rather than taking the time to actually understand technology -- it really was only a matter of time before the lawsuits started flying. A number of privacy and technology groups have teamed up to take on the FCC's ruling concerning making the internet comply with wiretap laws -- noting that actually following those laws would clearly slow down innovation. Of course, the FCC doesn't seem to care. From what they've said lately, it's become clear that innovation is secondary to law enforcement control. That, of course, is a recipe for innovation going elsewhere, but perhaps it's a sign of the times that we live in.

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Zealot, 25 Oct 2005 @ 6:20pm

Oh gn0es...
Yay for bureacracy. The only useful thing the FCC does is divide up the airwaves in an orderly fashion (two stations don't try to claim channel 2 in the same area, etc.) and they should've stopped at that.

Maybe all the law-enforcement worry would be moot if they just downloaded the internet and enforced the laws offline...

>. ASCII frown
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Gerald Gibson, 25 Oct 2005 @ 9:03pm

Feds
What we need is a Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game full of bad guys just for the Feds who can spend all day chasing down their imaginary communists, terrorists, drugies, sodomists, gays, Iraqies, or what the hell ever else they want to dream up. Just leave the rest of us sane people alone.
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Anonymous Coward, 26 Oct 2005 @ 11:05am

FCC
We really need to just get rid of the FCC. Seriously.
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