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by stopads 2315 days ago
The news here is that all telecom equipment is required to have back doors built into them, the "crime" is the manufacturer sometimes using this too.

I don't know if this is hugely revelatory or surprising, it has been common knowledge that all the telecoms are effectively government entities for a long time now. It's still just a bit surreal to see it all spelled out in black and white in the WSJ.
1 comments
tjohns 2315 days ago
That's not really news. It's mandated by the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), which is a law dating back to 1994: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Assistance_for_...

Some enterprise network gear even has CALEA modules built in to facilitate traffic intercepts. For example, here's some docs from both Mikrotik and Cisco:

https://wiki.mikrotik.com/wiki/CALEA

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/switches/lan/catalyst6...

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