In 1994, Congress passed a law requiring the new cell phone networks to provide "intercept solutions," as Caproni puts it. Now, the Obama administration wants a similar requirement for communications systems on the Internet.
The FBI, the Commerce Department and the various spy agencies have been meeting for months to discuss possible legislation, and last week there was a preliminary hearing on the subject in the House of Representatives.
"It was a very weird hearing," says computer engineer Susan Landau, who testified. She says it was hard to offer analysis because the administration is being vague: "They just haven't detailed their problems."
For instance, the FBI won't specify which Internet systems are at issue because it says it doesn't want to advertise its blind spots. Landau, who specialized in Internet security at Sun Microsystems, says she is convinced that there are problems "on occasion," but it's hard to know how severe they are.
Whatever the extent of law enforcement's problem, she says, the cure may be worse.
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