Jonathan Evans the director general of Mi5 since 2007 said recently in an interview that online phone calls are enabling terrorists to communicate with less risk and that online phone calls pose a risk to national security.
Instead of admitting that the UK government plans to log every phone call, internet use and email is flawed and a waste of taxpayers money, he much rather instill fear on society about dangerous terrorists.
Why am I not surprised that Mr Jonathan Evans said to the Daily Telegraph “If we are to maintain our capability, we are going to have to make decisions [on powers to intercept communications] in the next few years”. But doesn’t this man hasn’t got enough material to peek on living in the country in the World with most CCTV per habitant?
Camouflaged CCTV at Nottingham, United Kingdom
The environment in the UK is getting right so that at some point in the near future every citizen in the UK will have a surgically implanted microchip connected to Mi5 Headquarters for them to know when a citizen plans on throwing rubbish in the public pavement or avoid paying their council tax, that day maybe Mr. Evans and his voyeur friends wil be satisfied.
Something is wrong in the UK when one of the maximum responsable for spying on citizens admits that if you are a terrorist you can download Skype for free then make phone calls without them being able to log neither keep records.
Whilst James Rickards and his wife Marylin with their two little children will have all their Viagra and cancer treatment drug shopping online logged, Bin Laden friends will not, surely even a low level terrorist knows how to use VoIP software, still Britain is going ahead logging every phone call ever made in the country, with the exception of terrorists using very sophisticated equipment such as free online software to make free online calls.
If this man had some dignity he would be stepping out of his job and hand it over to someone who understands that you can not put your foot on citizens right to a private life and then claim that terrorists who know how to use VoIP will get away with it anyway.
This man is slowly winning the idiot of the year award and we are still in February, another big achievement for Mr. Evans that is not likely to figure on his autobiography. Let’s hope Her Majesty’s buffoon is better at analyzing data than he is at scaring the shit out of people.
Why use VoIP software for calls?
Making a voice over IP phone call you will be avoiding the big voyeur agencies to keep long lasting and embarassing logs, and you can even improve that by encrypting the calls so that if the voyeurs instruct your ISP to route all your internet traffic through them, you will still be protected.
The latest generation of mobile phones can use VoIP software for making phone calls so you don’t even need a computer for using VoIP and avoid unwanted logs.
Ways to encrypt your Voice over IP phone calls:
1- ZfoneTM: A secure and free VoIP phone software product which lets you make encrypted phone calls over the Internet, Zfone uses a new protocol called ZRTP and is available as a plugin for existing soft VoIP clients converting them into phones that make calls encrypted.
Zfone does not work with Skype as it uses a closed proprietary protocol, which they do not publish. Zfone source code on the other hand, is available for review.
2- Virtual Private Network: Route all your traffic through an offshore (outside your home country) VPN, you can look at my past review of VforVPN or search for “secure VPN” in Ixquick, there are many other VPN choices available.
3- Built-in-Encryption: Some VoIP software offers encrypted calling capability in their software. TiVi will even encrypt video calls over the internet, its soft phone incorporates the ZRTP Zphone cryptographic and authentication protocol.
4- Secure Real-Time Transfer Protocol: Network administrators only! SRPT protects VoIP calls by creating an encryption key for each call, is ideal for protecting voice over IP network traffic as it has a minimal effect on the quality of the calls.
5 – Transport Layer Security and IP security: Network administrators only! Transport Layer Security (TLS) and IP Security (IPSec) are the most common ways businesses encrypt their VoIP calls, TLS encrypts data transferred between two applicationis while IPSec encrypts information for the devices and their applications.
Software for VoIP calls:
1- Linphone (Windows and Linux)
2- Ekiga (Windows,NetBSD,Linux,OpenSolaris)
3- TiVi Phone (Symbian or Windows Mobile cellphone or PDA, also PC)
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