F.C.C. Supports Surveillance Rules on ?

Edwards Finance > Phones

Q. The new technology has posed some challenges to surveillance. Unlike the telephone service, which sends a steady electronic voice stream from caller to receiver over a wire, the Internet telephone service sends out bursts of data packets that are disassembled on one end of the conversation and reassembled on the other, just like e-mail and instant messaging.

A. Commission officials said that in the coming months they also expected to consider potential privacy issues raised by trying to monitor Internet-based conversations of suspects without also listening in on other conversations. A previous effort by the F.B.I. to monitor e-mail, called Carnivore, raised an outcry of criticism by privacy and civil liberties groups who said the surveillance equipment could tap into communications not subject to wiretap warrants. Commission officials said Wednesday that they hoped the costs and technological challenges could be overcome by a group of companies. In recent months, the group has developed a specialty of being able to monitor Internet phone conversations. The companies offering the surveillance technology include Verisign and Fiducianet. Executives and lawyers from the companies have been meeting with senior commission officials in recent weeks, according to documents on file with the commission, to describe their services and propose what the new rules should require. Under the rules being considered, new Internet telephone companies like Vonage would be able to satisfy their obligations by retaining the companies that offer surveillance technology. In a statement accompanying the proposal, Mr. Powell, the head of the commission, emphasized that trying to make the Internet-based phone services subject to provisions of the communications assistance act "does not indicate a willingness on my part to find that" such phone services should be subject to other regulations that apply to telephones. "The Notice of Proposed Rulemaking we issue today," Mr. Powell said "demonstrates that the interests of the law enforcement community can be fully addressed for potential information services, and these interests need not be an excuse for imposing onerous common carrier regulations on vibrant new services." The commission also determined that the law enforcement requirements applied to the popular "push to talk" services, a kind of walkie-talkie feature, offered by companies like Nextel. In other developments, the commission approved a proposal to permit Tivo Inc., which sells television-recording devices, to market equipment that would enable users to transmit digital television programs across the Internet. Holders of copyrighted programming, like the Motion Picture Association and the National Football League, have opposed such equipment, arguing that it would encourage the illegal distribution of their programs.

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