We Know Where You Live

This article on VoIPSA raises a nice point about the possibilities to track someone who’s using VoIP in P2P mode.

I said that ‘P2P helps’, but perhaps I should say ‘can help’, with the right systems in place. In the UK last week, Sky News ran a story about how criminals might use encrypted VoIP to run circles around the police, due to the difficulty of tapping and listening to the calls. I hope to be able to write in more detail in the next few weeks why this is basically untrue, but the information I have received is that the VoIP providers “can be very helpful” to the police in these cases. Even if a VoIP stream cannot be decrypted, it is often possible to obtain a list of times, durations, and IP addresses that can easily provide both location and evidence. Also, if a VoIP call breaks out onto the PSTN, a service offered by many or most VoIP telcos, then once again you have a location (albeit the call destination rather than the source), and you have the opportunity to monitor the call.

Technorati Tags: Lawful Interception, Legislation