The US government has won court authority to wiretap telephone calls made over the Internet, but experts say such a plan faces technological hurdles and could lead to new security risks as well, an AFP report said.
The AFP report said a federal appeals court ruled last week that the government has the authority to monitor VoIP calls on the same basis as regular phone calls, saying the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) also applies to cyberspace.
But a study released by a coalition of US high-tech industries said such a plan is not as easy as it seems, and could create more problems than it solves, the AFP report said.
The report by the Information Technology Association of America concluded that 'VoIP wiretapping would require either a massive re-engineering of the Internet itself or would introduce unacceptable Internet security risks.'
The AFP report also quoted Vint Cerf, an Internet pioneer who is now a consultant to Google and a co-author of the study, as saying that there are key differences between the public switched telephone network and Internet calls, such as those by Skype or other Internet calling services.
VoIP, said Cerf, 'is just carrying bits (of data) that can be interpreted as sounds.'
The report also said ITAA, which represents the major US technology companies, believes that wiretapping on the Internet could undermine security by opening up the possibility of hackers accessing the wiretaps.