What Are the Feds Putting Up Your Cellphone’s Backdoor?

We can't show you what comes up when you Google "cellphone backdoor" under federal law. Hence the kittens.

Aside from being the genesis of images that will sear your corneas (and don’t come whining to us if you Google it), what do cell phone back doors have to do with you? And why are world governments trying to force their way up those back doors? And will commenters try to reply with “FIRST!” or “GIGGITY!” when they see this shameless pun? All your answers below in Uproxx News!

First up, America, the land of the free, wants to read your free emails and read your free IMs. Oh, and listen to you on VoIP as you scream at your guild for screwing up the raid yet again. That’s because they’re trying to introduce a law, a gentle, stroking, yet insistent law that would force all Internet providers currently offering encrypted communications to create and open back doors to the U.S. government’s firm but somehow loving pressure. This is not for foreign companies, oh no. Just companies with offices and doing business on US soil will need to submit to this invasive law.

If you’re wondering why the government’s doing all this when it can already go up the front with programs like DCSNet, which can basically spy on everything you do online, the answer is Skype: it can’t spy on VoIP, and of course, the terrorists, people who can’t even light their shoes, are somehow masters of this technology.

The government, of course, claims that you’ll still need a court order to go up the back door and that it would never, ever do it without that legal document greasing the gears. Because that would be wrong, and you should at least buy the communications provider some wine, first.

If the American government is gently knocking on the backdoor, the Indian government is bursting in, getting right at home, and not even buying anybody chocolates. India has been demanding total access to the nation’s communications network approximately in the same way that a redneck with a tube of

Adorably Censored!

would. In other words, not subtly. Among other problems, it’s demanding that private companies fork over everything passed over their encrypted Blackberries in what amounts to plaintext, because you can trust the Indian government not to steal your corporate secrets.

Part of the problem is that Indian law is based on British ideas of privacy. You know, the country that has more cameras per person than a police state could ever dream of. So basically if the government wants to block Skype, decrypt Blackberries, and otherwise violently have their way with data systems, there’s not much the Indian populace can do but lie there and take it, even if it costs them billions in lost business as companies go elsewhere for ill-trained tech support.

But on the bright side, it would make “Outsourced” irrelevant and get that off the air that much sooner, so there’s that upside.

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• Hey, speaking of shameless privacy violation, that disturbing body scanner that takes your clothes off started providing the creepier parts of Hamburg airport security with happy-pants pictures starting yesterday. That’s it to the left, being used in some weird dirty video for HotBodyScans.com (The Local)
• And in slightly funnier privacy violation news, a UK law firm going after fifteen-year-olds downloading MP3s and viruses had a massive security breach that redefined the term “amateur hour.” And now they’re getting sued by Privacy International! Oopsie! (Slyck)

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