VoIP-Point

NOTE: This article has been superceded by this update: http://www.voip-point.net/2009/02/27/eurojust-voip-interception-update/

EUROJUST, the European Union’s judicial cooperation unit, is to examine the possibilities of bugging voip calls within the EU.

This comes after news that Italian law-enforcement agencies have requested help from EUROJUST in tapping voip calls made by criminals in Italy.

EUROJUST mention Skype by name but also include their intention to examine other voip systems in their press release. In the case of Skype which uses a proprietary protocol and encryption system, EUROJUST would presumably need to coerce Skype who are incorporated in Luxembourg to hand over encryption keys or create a ‘back door’ in their software to allow government wiretapping.

In the alternate case of SIP or similar VoIP communications, many calls may currently be transmitted ‘in the clear’ and be easy to intercept by simply capturing the packet stream for later playback. In cases where encryption is employed either in the protocol or the connection level, wiretapping may prove to be considerably more difficult as even the fact that a call is being made over a normally-encrypted data connection may be difficult or impossible to detect.

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