FBI Wants Google, Facebook to Provide Wiretap Backdoor: Report

Local Editor

The FBI wants Facebook, Google and other large Internet companies to build in backdoors to allow wiretapping, CNET reports.

A CNET report has revealed that the Federal Bureau of Investigation is pressuring major Internet communications firms to build in backdoors that would allow the bureau to conduct wiretapping investigations. The report said the FBI fears its ability to conduct surveillance as more users employ Web-based communication and messaging services to talk to each other.

The news is unlikely to go down well with Internet freedom groups, which are already alarmed by government proposals to regulate and monitor the Internet.
"New methods of communication should not be subject to a government green light before they can be used," Ross Schulman, of the Computer and Communications Industry Association, said in the report.

The Web products to be covered would include social networks, Voice Over Internet Protocol, instant messaging and Web email, CNET said in the May 4 article.

The report also mentions any wiretapping would require a court order before it could be initiated. "What the FBI is proposing is an amendment to the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, or CALEA, which would require communications platforms like Facebook and Web email programs like Gmail and Yahoo to build FBI-accessible backdoors into their services," the article said.

Privacy is already a major concern for social networking sites like Facebook, which counts a little more than 900 million users worldwide and more than 150 million users in the US.

"While some privacy or security issues arise from poor choices Facebook users themselves make, other problems can stem from the ways the company collects data, how it manages and packages its privacy controls, and the fact that users' data can wind up with people or companies with whom they did not intend to share," the report said.

"Some users might be surprised to know that Facebook gets a report every time they visit a site with a 'Like' button, regardless of whether or not they click on that button, have a Facebook account or are even logged in," the report finally read.

Source: C|NET, edited by moqawama.org