Berkeley, Calif.
The man who founded the world’s largest free phone-call service says Canada runs the risk of joining innovation-blocking countries like Panama if it persists in trying to regulate Internet telephony services.
Free World Dialup CEO Jeff Pulver is known as the American who fought to keep the U.S. regulator’s hands off Internet telephony. He got an exemption from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) so FWD is not treated as a phone company.“I really found out who my friends are,” he said at the 14th annual Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference last week here, “because the state attorney generals of both Michigan and Minnesota opposed my petition. They figured that in a few years from now we’re gonna start charging money for it, so therefore it’s bad now.”
Pulver won’t say if he will charge money someday, but his lawyer assured me that it’s not in the immediate future. “Jeff has about 30 companies doing things like selling phones that connect directly to the Internet,” said Pulver.com general counsel Jonathan Askin, “so he doesn’t really need cash from FWD right now.”
Of course, not everybody gives their VOIP service away.
Primus was an early mover in the Canadian market. Now others are piling in, notably Group Telecom in a deal with Vonage, which already has 140,000 U.S. customers.
Pulver announced at the conference that he is heading to Ottawa on May 17 to talk to Canada’s regulator, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC). He’ll try to convince the CRTC to abandon its wicked Canadian ways, and follow the FCC’s lead. His visit is very timely.
Early this month, the CRTC announced that it planned to regulate Internet telephone service in substantially the same way it does regular phone service, which means concepts such as universal access and emergency 911 service.
This is consistent with the commission’s track record of trying to be “technology-blind” and just regulating services, no matter how they’re delivered.
But this may not be so easy for VOIP, which is fundamentally different from your father’s black rotary phone and telco calling card. “Long distance” doesn’t mean anything when your phone is really an address on the Internet. Your virtual phone number can be in the area code of your choosing. Whole new services become available, such as picking up voicemail on the Net or seeing your missed calls on a web page.
In 2002, Panama tried to wish VOIP away by banning it completely. Now, Panamanians can make Internet phone calls, but they pay a 12-per-cent tax to the government. Like Panama, Canada “is closing down innovation and this whole concept of disruptive communications,” said Pulver. “They’re trying to stop a revolution by forcing it into an outdated model.”
There is a window of opportunity for him to make his points, since the CRTC has only given an “indication of direction,” not a final ruling on VOIP regulation.
One group that is especially interested in VOIP technology is the law enforcement community. Internet telephony is apparently making their job a lot tougher. “It used to be so easy to carry out a wiretap order,” said Mike Warren, a former FBI agent and now president of Fiducianet, Inc. “You basically used alligator clips.”
“Now parts of the call could be carried by an ISP, other parts through a VOIP company, or it might all go directly computer to computer without passing through any service provider. Where do you put the tap?”
Warren’s company is paid by ISPs to help them comply with law enforcement orders. He confirms that he’s been talking with Telus and Bell Canada.
The big problem for the Boys in Blue is that technology has been outstripping them. Recently the U.S. Department of Justice, the Drug Enforce- ment Agency and the FBI went to the FCC asking for help. They argued that “the ability of federal, state and local law enforcement to carry out critical electronic surveillance is being compromised today” and want to have “back doors” installed in all communications systems to help them catch the bad guys (with proper court orders, of course.)
A lot of people believe that the FBI can already watch Voice Over IP calls through its Carnivore system. This is a super-sophisticated Internet monitoring tool that the FBI brags is “superior to any commercially available ‘sniffer’ tool that ISP network administrators typically might use for network oversight, management and troubleshooting.”
The FBI ’fessed up to Carnivore’s existence and described it in a September 6, 2000 statement before the U.S. Congress, which makes for fascinating reading. Indeed, a recent terrorist capture was attributed, in a sort of veiled way, to evidence obtained in this fashion.
Of course, the back doors they are asking for would make wiretapping even easier for them, and help police departments that don’t have a Carnivore box sitting around.
One of the high points of each Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference is the conferring of the annual Big Brother Awards.
Winners this year included the Transportation Safety Administration, which administers the No-Fly Watchlist. In the U.S. of A., even as a citizen, you may be routinely stopped and quizzed at airports if you happen to share a name with some bad guy and there’s apparently not much you can do about it.
Northwest Airlines was also “honoured” for its enthusiastic compliance with U.S. government requests by turning over three months of Passenger Name Records (PNRs) for testing of a passenger-profiling system. (Canadian airlines do this too, but not with the same patriotic zeal as U.S. carriers.)
This has attracted the ire of privacy advocates such as author Edward Hasbrouck, who spoke at the conference on the topic of travel data and privacy.
This conference provided an excellent vantage point to watch the pendulum swinging between security fears and privacy worries.
Last year, still stinging from 9/11, the security folks pretty much held sway. That meeting was in New York City, not far from the awe-inspiring hole that once was the World Trade Centre. This year, in sight of the Golden Gate Bridge, the privacy guys are getting lots of attention, especially when they point out hidden cameras and expose surveillance techniques such as secret credit-scoring systems.
All in all, the security/ privacy pendulum seems to be back where it belongs this year – somewhere in the middle.
Web watch:
www.cfp2004.org
www.freeworldialup.com
www.fiducianet.biz
(Tom Keenan is a professor at the University of Calgary and an expert on technology and its social implications. He can be reached at keenan@businessedge.ca)
