Skype to twart any wiretap requests

Posted June 11, 2008 at 07:08 AM by Christian Milsom

Section: Communications, Email / IM, VoIP, Computers, Security

In the hostile world of today it is good to know that anything you say, or type, is safe from the prying eyes of family member’s, government organizations or even just a nosy person of the street. However, unfortunately, that is not always the case. A recent News.com survey into privacy revealed some pretty interesting results, the most notable of which is that AOL AIM is the most secure with no logs and secure logging-in and secure conversations, and Facebook Chat is the worst as they refused to answer lots of questions and also have an insecure log-in and insecure conversations.

One of the questions asked was “Have you ever received a subpoena, court order or other law enforcement request asking you to perform a live interception or wiretap, meaning the contents of your users’ communications would be instantly forwarded to law enforcement?”

Of those that answered, none would say except for Skype, who said that they ‘could not comply’ to a federal request for a wiretap on the grounds that “because of Skype’s peer-to-peer architecture and encryption techniques, Skype would not be able to comply with such a request.”

This is interesting to say the least, and is both good and bad, as although you do not get spied upon in your conversations, neither can potential terrorists which in turn makes the job of the police a lot harder. So what do you want, privacy or security? The online conundrum is back!

Via [CNET]