The National Science Foundation has granted George Mason University researchers over $300,000 to develop technologies to eavesdrop on VoIP phone calls.
The technology that [assistant professor of software engineering Xinyuan Wang] and his colleagues are working on does not decrypt conversations. It tracks packets as they move from one user to another, allowing authorities to see who is talking to whom, but not to see what they are saying. Wang conceded that "from a privacy advocate's point of view, this is an attack on privacy," but he also noted that "from a police point of view, this is a way to trace things."
Link to CNET story (via unwired list)
