Overview of the Controversies
We study two closely related issues that profoundly affect communications privacy.
- Interception of Communications (via telephone, email, and the Internet) by government agencies and government attempts to restrict the use of secure encryption.
- Cryptography that have the potential for making personal business activities on computer networks both secure and anonymous, thus avoiding many of the privacy problem.
At the same time that computer technology created new risks to privacy by increasing the amount and sensitivity of information available over telecommunications systems, enabled wiretapping more difficult.
“The increased used of encryption meant that law-enforcement agents could not read some communications they intercepted. Privacy advocates and civil libertarians argued for strong protection for communications using new technologies, to regain the level of privacy we had had before, while the FBI argued for increased control over ENCRYPTION AND INTERCEPTION OF COMMUNICATION
telecommunications technology and restrictions on the use of encryption to regain the level of access to communications and documents it had had before.”
In 1991, the following statement appeared in a bill in the U.S Senate. It expresses the goal pursued by the FBI and the other government agencies since then.
“ It is the sense of Congress that providers of electronic communications services and manufacturers of electronic communications services equipment shall ensure that communications systems permit the government to obtain the plain text contents of voice, data, and other communications when appropriately authorized by law.”
Wire tapping- is the monitoring of telephone and Internet conversations by a third party, often by covert means. The telephone or wire tap received its name because, historically, the monitoring connection was an actual electrical tap on the telephone line. Legal wiretapping by a government agency is also called lawful interception. Passive wiretapping monitors or records the traffic, while active wiretapping alters or otherwise affects it.
What do u think, is it ethical to intercept communications?
for me..
yes.it is ethical if it is used in a right way...we should protect our privacy but it is about security also...Intercepting communication can have both advantages and disadvantages especially privacy over security and security over privacy, we can have both if we just dont abused it.
