“A newly patented Microsoft technology called Legal Intercept that would allow the company to secretly intercept, monitor and record Skype calls is stoking privacy concerns,” Jaikumar Vijayan reports for Computerworld.
“According to Microsoft, Legal Intercept is designed to silently record communications on VoIP networks such as Skype,” Vijayan reports. “‘Data associated with a request to establish a communication is modified to cause the communication to be established via a path that includes a recording agent.’ The recording agent is then able to ‘silently record’ the communication, according to Microsoft’s description.”
“Michael Froomkin, a professor of law at the University Of Miami School Of Law, said that from the patent description it sounds as if the technology would allow Microsoft to do is make Skype CALEA capable,” Vijayan reports. “CALEA (Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act) requires telecommunications carriers and makers of communications equipment to enable their equipment so it can be used for surveillance purposes by federal law enforcement agencies. But the implications of the technology are much broader, Froomkin added. ‘First, making a communication technology FBI-friendly means also making it dictator-friendly, and in the long run this is not good for movements like the Arab Spring,’ he said. ‘Second, experience shows that building in back doors invites exploits.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Skype? What is this thing of which they speak? Sounds like something that was once on our Macs, but has since been purged, zeroed over, never to return.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Pony” for the heads up.]
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