Wiretapping landlines and mobile telephones is an
established part of crime prevention, but VoIP (voice over internet
protocol) calls are a new phenomenon and harder to bug.
Because servers and connections often sit in foreign countries,
commonly the US, a country's law enforcement agency can not
exercise the same power of discovery that they can over a phone
provider's records. Calls can also be harder to trace when they are
free, since there is no billing record.
Swiss newspaper SonntagsZeitung reports that the Swiss
Department of the Environment, Transport, Energy and Communications
is examining the use of software to listen to VOIP
conversations.
The software being assessed comes from Swiss company Era IT
Solutions, said the report. The software is placed on to a user's
computer by that person's internet service provider, but only on
the orders of a judge, according to current plans.
The software records ongoing conversations and sends the
recordings in broken up data packets back to a server controlled by
the authorities. Its manufacturer claims that if the computer is
switched off before all the packets have been sent, it will begin
sending the rest when the computer is switched back on.
The software is also capable of monitoring what is going on in
the room in which a computer is located. It can switch on a
computer's microphone so that the room itself can be eavesdropped
on, according to the report.
The Swiss Surveillance Act does not allow for Trojan horse-type
surveillance, said the SunntagsZeitung, but federal criminal
regulations do allow software-based wiretaps as long as they are
controlled in the same manner as other surveillance equipment, it
said.
