Personal And Public Safety Issues

VoIP: Personal And Public Safety Issues

There has been much talk recently regarding the prospect of designing a legal framework to apply to telecommunications over the Internet – to VoIP, in other words, and to its wireless version, VoWiFi. It seems that federal authorities such as the FCC and the FBI are disturbed by the fact that this new technology doesn’t allow accurate call tracing and tapping. The reason why calls are not traceable is that the technology is completely different from PSTN and, naturally, the tracking systems working on PSTN are ineffective on VoIP.

Before we go on exploring the issue of imposing regulations, a brief presentation of VoIP is in place. Voice over Internet Protocol, or Internet telephony, works by sending voice in the form of data packets over the Internet. The data packets travel over networks of different configuration until they reach their destination, where they are decoded so that another person can hear the voice of the speaker.

VoIP wasn’t born yesterday, though. It has been around for about ten years now, but the early implementations of the system still had some quality flaws that prevented it from making a strong impact from the very start. In the meantime, however, the quality of VoIP communications has greatly improved and many people and companies have already given up their landlines to sign up for the VoIP service.

Among the famous advantages offered by VoIP, reduced costs and robust feature integration are among the most often quoted ones. Such features as voicemail, call forwarding and transfer, conference calling, and others from this well known suite are included in your VoIP service pack for free – with PSTN, you would be paying for them. In addition to that, calling plans are quite favourable, some even featuring unlimited calling. Communication is not restricted to voice, as you can easily integrate video and data.

There are, however, shortcomings as well. One which is very serious, and which is often a reason for people to postpone signing up for the service, is the incompatibility with the 911 system – namely, the impossibility to perform a reliable tracing of a caller using a VoIP phone. So far, the 911 system has only had to deal with PSTN networks. When mobile telephony emerged, cellular networks experienced similar problems to those of VoIP, but in their case it was easier to design a tracking system which was compatible with the E-911 (Enhanced 911) service. In the case of VoIP, the problem is more complex. The two callers are probably behind firewalls or NAT routers, so tracking can normally only reveal the identity and address of the Internet service provider. The different configurations of the networks that the voice packets cross on their way to the destination further complicates tracking. Due to this issue, users are advised to maintain a landline phone only for 911, or at least to register their new VoIP number with 911, so that the emergency dispatcher can map the number to a street address (but that only works as long as you don’t change your location).

That is an issue regarding personal safety. But public safety is also important. It’s not only the 911 service that cannot track calls. There are cases when federal organizations such as the FBI need to keep phone lines under surveillance – and how can they do that with VoIP, when there is no actual line? When an answer is found to this, another question might soon be asked: should surveillance be extended to instant messaging as well? The technology used is the same and what can be said on the phone can just as well said in a typed in a chat session.

Now, to be quite precise, some amount of tracking is possible. At least the location of the caller can sometimes be determined if the ISP is willing to disclose it – and there’s no reason why they shouldn’t disclose it to official institutions such as the FBI. However, eavesdropping remains complicated and not always possible.

While these issues still need to be clarified, that shouldn’t divert our attention from the fact that VoIP is improving constantly and that there is a growing number of people subscribing and enjoying the benefits it has to offer.

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