Wiretapping capability for VOIP mandatory on May 14th

Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This should be interesting, talk about a technical challenge, and one filled with unintended consequences. When it comes to VOIP to landline connections, wiretapping is a no brainer on the land line side, but anything but simple on the VOIP side, especially in the realm of peer to peer communications. Ie, in order to tap VOIP, it would appear on the outset, one had to give up some level of fault tolerance, in order to have a known point where a tap can be made. Yet, in reviewing the abstract of the ANSI standard,

While previous LAES standards from ATIS have addressed VoIP communication, the focus of this new standard is on network(s) that provide subscriber connectivity to the Internet. Internet access and services may be provided by a set of independent or related entities, i.e., a Digital Subscriber Line or Wireless Fidelity (Wi-Fi ®) provider and an Internet service provider.

it appears they are addressing subscriber connectivity, rather than mid way. This at least for the short term, may be the only viable solution from an economics as well as a fault tolerant vantage point. Yet, this does put a significant burden on law enforcement in that they have to identify the point of connectivity, rather than just the person called out in the warrant.