Skype's anonymity is under threat again

European law enforcement agencies want to be able to listen on Skype

For a long time, Skype has taken the position that the interception of conversations of attackers is not their concern. This is not a telephone company and they do not own their own cable networks and telephone lines. This approach allows Skype to avoid a number of problems with regulatory authorities. For example, in the USA there is a law obliging telephone companies to provide the possibility of wiretapping of telephones by a court decision. However, now Skype has come to the attention of law enforcement agencies in Europe, who see a security risk in that criminal elements can make unchecked calls through the company's service.

Recent claims have come in the form of a statement from Eurojust, the organization coordinating efforts to combat organized crime in the European Union. The statement says that the Italian division of the organization coordinates a pan-European investigation into the hacker’s use of VoIP, and Skype in particular. The origins and intention to bring the investigation to the end lie in the frequent cases of using Italian criminal Skype, including drug dealers, arms dealers and prostitutes who used the service to avoid detection. The purpose of the investigation, conducted by all 27 Eurojust participants, is to develop legal norms and technical methods for intercepting Internet calls.

There is currently no legal basis for intercepting VoIP calls. The police can only get permission from the court to wiretap city or cell phones. And Skype agrees that calls to the city's telephone network using VoIP technology are subject to the law, but the responsibility should be borne by the operators of the city and cellular networks. And for calls exclusively on IP networks, no interception laws exist.

Even if Eurojust pushes the adoption of such a law, the technical obstacles to intercepting Skype calls remain unresolved. In addition to the difficulties in determining the physical location of the caller, Skype encoding is a big problem.
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The problem is that voice encoding for transmission over IP networks occurs between two Skype clients. At the same time, two Skype clients generate encryption keys that I transmit only to each other. Skype servers are not involved in this process, their main function is to confirm that two Skype users are now available, and to establish a connection. And since voice transmissions occur without the participation of Skype servers, Skype has no technical possibility to listen to the conversation.

Failed attempts to decipher Skype calls by third-party means only increase pressure. The Bavarian IT company that the authorities hired to crack the Skype protocol was unable to do this, to which Eurojust immediately declared that Skype does not cooperate with the authorities and does not provide them with tools for hacking and listening to VoIP calls. In response, Skype stated that it “carefully read Eurojust’s findings on the law enforcement program and its possibilities,” and added that “it cooperates with law enforcement agencies in a case where it is lawfully and technically possible.”

Translation from voip-news.com for octopusline.ru