Insecurities of FBIs eavesdropping equipment
Posted by creining | Filed under Security
Cringley, that guy over at PBS, wrote an article about the FBI’s Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) that enables them to eavesdrop on cell phones, pagers, and the internet in order to gain information about criminals. As much as I dislike the rampant loss of privacy at the hands of big brother, the articles purpose is to shed light on the fact that the eavesdropping equipment is not much more than some software running on a Sun workstation sitting next to the phone switches in the phone companies machine rooms. This, in and of itself, would not be a problem but the fact that the Sun box is not secured and basic firewalling and hardening is not enforced is scary – just scary. And these systems have been hacked giving away the ability to tap anyone at anytime. I think that the lesson learned is that a project run by law enforcement in collaboration with the government can not be properly and securely deployed.
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