Re: Security of public network?

> Scott Ehrlich wrote:
>  
>> Of the various "Landline" phone methods (though there are likely others):
>>
>> - fiber (i.e. FIOS)
>> - POTS (copper)
>> - VOIP (vonage)
>>
>> Do they have equal weight when it comes to security of residential
>> communication, and the customer can boil it down to price?
>>    
>
> Depends what kind of security you're talking about.  None of those use
> encryption, and all can be "wiretapped" by various means.  For someone who is
> not law-enforcement, there may be different severity of penalties for someone
> illegally snooping on the different classes of wire (supposing they get caught).
>
> The CALEA law (and subsequent ammendments to it) updated the Wiretap Act and
> the ECPA to include the non-POTS options on your list.  So from a
> law-enforcement point of view, they should be equivalent: if the police tap
> any of those without a warrant, any evidence gathered will (should?) be
> inadmissible in court.  There's an interesting discussion on wikipedia:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawful_interception
>
> This also has some good info:
> "http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/privacy/Statutory Summaries for Module IV.htm"
>
> To the last part of your question ("[can] the customer can boil it down to
> price?"), you also have to consider link quality.  I've used all three of
> those, plus Comcast's brand of VOIP (note that Verizon patents mean that
> vonage and comcast avoid the term "VOIP" like the plague).  I've got FIOS now,
> and the Verizon box connected to my house telephone wiring doesn't seem to
> have enough juice: I can't have two phones active at once in the house (i.e.
> multiple people sharing a line so that both my wife and I can talk to my
> parents at the same time).
>
> Comcast's internet-phone stunk.  It would often cut off the first word you
> said, so if you were trying to answer questions with one-word answers, it made
> for a difficult conversation.
>
> I used Vonage (over Comcast) for a while, and that wasn't too bad.  A little
> bit of the same issue that Comcast's phone service had, but not as bad (it
> only happened occasionally, versus every single call for Comcast).  Cheaper too.
>
> Note that some of the bandwidth shaping technologies that Comcast wants to use
> would really kill vonage, because of the specific way they implement bandwidth
> limiting (the latency increases would be disasterous for third-party
> phone-over-internet providers like vonage).  I stopped paying attention to
> what Comcast was doing as soon as I could dump them for FIOS, so I'm not sure
> how that situation has panned out (or how it's been evolving).
>