In theory, a terrorist in another country could make call through a VoIP provider here in the U.S.. If this were to happen and the government wanted to "spy" on the terrorist's communications, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act comes into play-or it did until it was gutted by the Protect America Act of 2007, which is set to expire in February of 2008.

Of course, some lawmakers are trying to come up with an excuse to get another similar bill passed to keep FISA from getting in the way. Leave it to Michael McConnel, Director of National Intelligence, to come up with the doomsay scenario:

If McConnell is to be believed, Al Qaeda merely needs to switch to using U.S.-based voice over IP services, and it can immediately crush the NSA under a pile of FISA paperwork. No matter where the NSA actually tried to intercept the Internet-routed phone call, a FISA warrant would be required. For $24.99 a month per terrorist, Al Qaeda could launch a gigantic legal denial of service against the folks at Fort Meade. Furthermore, now that the iPhone has been hacked to support VoIP software, the VoIP-subscribing terrorists could communicate in style.

It's a clever idea, I'll grant you that. Kind of a Denial of Service (DoS) of sorts, but I don't see it happening, at least not in enough numbers to cause a true denial of service. Maybe I'm wrong, though, what do you think?

Via Dvorak Uncensored, surveill@nce st@ate
Photo from DefenseLINK