Members of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), an international group of network designers, operators, vendors and researchers who develop standards for the Internet, decided during a meeting last week not to make the snooping efforts of US law enforcement officials any easier than they already are.
Already, the telecommunications industry is required to make wiretapping efforts easier for the government to listen in on suspected criminals' phone calls. Now, the government is looking to track communications over the Internet. The IETF membership gave a resounding "No" to the request .
"Basically the consensus of the meeting was that the IETF should not put features into protocols that are solely for the reason to provide for wiretapping," IEFT Area Director Scott Bradner told CNET.com.
The IETF rejection comes on the heels of the Federal Trade Commission's inquiry into online consumer profiling, as well as reports that RealAudio assigned globally unique identification numbers to its popular music listening software without informing users. Even Microsoft faced allegations that it had left a backdoor in all of the Windows operating systems that would allow government entrance to computer systems using Windows, which caused a flurry of editorial and rebuttals to fly.
It remains to be seen whether the Feds will eventually get their way. The next move is theirs.