The newspaper said the White House plans to submit a bill next year
that would require all online services that enable communications to be
technically equipped to comply with a wiretap order. That would include
providers of encrypted e-mail, such as BlackBerry, networking sites like
Facebook and direct communication services like Skype.
Federal law
enforcement and national security officials say new the regulations are needed
because terrorists and criminals are increasingly giving up their phones to
communicate online.
"We're talking about lawfully authorized
intercepts," said FBI lawyer Valerie E. Caproni. "We're not talking
about expanding authority. We're talking about preserving our ability to
execute our existing authority in order to protect the public safety and
national security." The White House plans to submit the proposed
legislation to Congress next year.
The new regulations would raise new
questions about protecting people's privacy while balancing national security
concerns.
James Dempsey, the vice president of the Center for Democracy and
Technology, an Internet policy group, said the new regulations would have
"huge implications."
"They basically want to turn back the clock and make
Internet services function the way that the telephone system used to
function," he told the Times.
The Times said the Obama proposal would
likely include several requires:
Any service that provides encrypted messages must be
capable of unscrambling them.
Any foreign communications providers that do
business in the US would have to have an office in the United States that's
capable of providing intercepts.
Software developers of peer-to-peer
communications services would be required to redesign their products to allow
interception.
The Times said that some privacy and technology advocates say
the regulations would create weaknesses in the technology that hackers could
more easily exploit.
