The End of Lawful Access

The recent federal election at least temporarily slowed the move towards the adoption in Canada of lawful access legislation – legislation that mandates that interception capability be built in by ISPs and telephone service providers. Lawful access legislation will likely make a reappearance. But as VoIP adoption begins to accelerate, VoIP encryption clients will become more common as well, and one really has to wonder where lawful access will end up. Today, news that Phil Zimmerman, the creator of PGP, has released Zfone, a Mac and Linux client that encrypts any SIP VoIP voice stream. A windows client is said to be on the way.