Congress now able to use Skype, Oovoo for videoconferencing, dickpic-sharing

On the official Skype blog today, news that "The U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Administration announced that they will open up the world of Skype communications to Members of Congress and their staff. (...) Skype's engineers worked closely with the Congressional network security team to ensure that Skype is used safely for official business." Oh, I bet. Competitor Oovoo also got the green light.

• [D.R.W.]

  Microsoft Looks to Patent Skype-Spying Technology

  http://blogs.seattleweekly.com/dailyweekly/2011/06/microsoft_looks_to_patent_skyp.php

  “Sometimes, a government or one of its agencies may need to monitor communications between telephone users. To do this with POTS [Plain Old Telephone Service], after obtaining the appropriate legal permission, a recording device may be placed at a central office associated with a selected telephone number. Electrical signals corresponding to sound to and from the telephones at the selected telephone number may be monitored and transformed into sound. This sound may then be recorded by the recording device without the telephone users being aware of the recording. With new Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and other communication technology, the POTS model for recording communications does not work. “

  • [Xeni Jardin]

    Oh, I’m sure there are already surveillance backdoors.

• [lasttide]

  So… Congress previously didn’t have access to phones?

• [Nadreck]

  Maybe the G20 dudes can get this technology too. Save a lot of wear and tear on host cities.