German Police Admit Skype is a Problem

The German police force are having a problem with Skypes encryption system:-

Quote:

"The encryption with Skype telephone software creates grave difficulties for us," he told Reuters. "We cannot decipher it. That is why we are talking about source telecommunication surveillance, i.e. getting to the source before encryption or after it has been decrypted."

http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/22042 ... ils-police

Of course, end to end encryption systems like Zimmermans zFone mean that it's not just Skype. In fact, zFone works on your SIP system right behind the client phone meaning that any system law enforcement have put in place for lawful intercept at the ISP end would be rendered useless. So quite what the German police mean by "source encryption" I don't know. You'd have to get inside the phone.

I'm not sure this is one that the police can do anything about. You could make encrypted RTP illegal, but anyone involved in criminal activity (eg the people they're interested in) is probably not going to pay too much attention to that...

Reply from middletn on Nov 24, 2007 - 09:27 PM

I believe they're talking about having to bug, or use parabolic listening devices to get the conversation as it's being spoken.

regards

Reply from martyndavies on Nov 25, 2007 - 10:57 AM

Of course when callers use Skype to connect to the PSTN (Skypein and Skypeout), then you have an ingress/egress point where lawful intercept can be applied. I note though that Germany doesn't yet have Skypein numbers, so that's one less option for the police. You're right, though, the problem doesn't only apply to Skype but any desktop-to-desktop communication product for VoIP or IM. In this regard lawful intercept is something of a dinosaur, since terrorists and crminals can just as well communicate using IMs from Gizmo, AIM, Gtalk, etc.

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