Since Greek times, institutions of higher education have long been hallowed places of controversial discussion, free speech, and even dissent with public policy. The new administrative amendment to the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act to include Voice over Internet Protocol systems administered by individuals, companies, and schools has gone too far.
We applaud the Department of the Chief Information Officer for being on top of the situation from the beginning and getting RPI on board with the American Council on Education’s opposition to the amendment. Not only is the amendment an enormous financial burden on the Institute’s strained budget (which will eventually be passed on to students), but the regulation has the potential to make students fearful of communicating freely.
Under CALEA, traditional phone providers are already required to convert their digital phone signals back to analog signals for transmission to law enforcement. This is because most law-enforcement agencies are using 30-year-old interception equipment made for a telephone network engineered by a single, monolithic company.
Imposition of a retrograde rule such as the one the FCC has brought forward would serve to stifle innovation in a field pioneered by small-time entrepreneurs, small companies, and forward thinking educational institutions. VoIP would then again be in the hands of the companies who could afford the legal wrangling and interception equipment mandated by the amendment.
With the advent of the Internet and utilities such as Tor, which allow users to anonymize their Internet activities, people around the world can communicate quickly and cheaply. Interception of voice communications traveling over a network may only be the beginning. Once network-monitoring infrastructure is in place, student e-mail and TCP/IP traffic might be next—and RPI must comply with whatever the law turns out to be.
If students cannot communicate freely on their college campuses without fear of reprisals from the school’s administration, government, or law enforcement, then colleges across the nation have failed in their first and primary mandate—to protect open discourse. RPI is already working in the right direction to solve this problem, and should continue to lead the way in pushing back against these new rules.
