The legal aspects of VoIP
Technology is advancing by leaps and bounds. The question arises as to how the issues of privacy should be dealt with in new technologies.
In the case of VoIP, there has been a great deal of controversy regarding its legal aspects. As the popularity of VoIP grows, governments are becoming more interested in regulating VoIP in a manner similar to legacy PSTN services.
In U.S., the Federal Communications Commission now requires all VoIP operators who do not support Enhanced 911 to attach a sticker warning that traditional 911 services aren’t available.
The FCC recently required VoIP operators to support CALEA wiretap functionality. The Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), requires telecommunications services to rewire their networks to provide police and the FBI with guaranteed access to wiretaps.
The combination of 1964 federal wiretap laws (and its numerous amendments), along with CALEA, have put the FBI in a position to have the authority to wiretap broadband services. It means that federal authorities are able, not only to monitor telephone calls made by VoIP, but any data transmissions that are made over the broadband service, giving access to privileged information, confidential or business trade secrets, and sensitive medical information.
Some companies, such as MetaSwitch and Cisco Systems, Inc. have made their technologies CALEA compliant, providing FBI backdoor access to any VoIP transmissions. However, technological limitations will still inevitably lead to over-inclusive sweeps of data transmissions
The Telecommunications Act of 2005 proposes adding more traditional PSTN regulations, such as local number portability and universal service fees. Other future legal issues are likely to include laws against wiretapping and network neutrality.
Some Latin American countries, fearful for their state owned telephone services, have imposed restrictions on the use of VoIP, including in Panama where VoIP is taxed. In Ethiopia, where a totalitarian government is monopolizing telecommunication service, it is a criminal offence to offer services using VoIP. The country has installed firewalls to prevent international calls being made using VoIP. These measures were taken after a popularity in VoIP reduced the income generated by the state owned telecommunication company.
In the European Union, the treatment of VoIP service providers is a decision for each Member State’s national telecoms regulator, which must use competition law theory to define relevant national markets and then determine whether any service provider on those national markets has “significant market power” (and so should be subject to certain obligations). A general distinction is usually made between VoIP services that function over managed networks (via broadband connections) and VoIP services that function over unmanaged networks (essentially, the Internet).