The Obama administration is drafting legislation to expand wiretap authority to intercept all Facebook, BlackBerry and Skype communications.

The Obama administration is working on a proposal that would make it easier for law enforcement and security officials to eavesdrop on online chatter, including e-mail, instant messaging and social networks, reported The New York Times on Sept. 27.

The proposed legislation will likely come before Congress next year.

The White House-sponsored bill would require all Internet-based communication services to be technically capable of complying with a federal wiretap order. This includes being able to intercept and unscramble encrypted messages, said the Times.

It will give the government the ability to listen in on literally every communication anyone makes online.

While the officials working on the proposal do not yet agree on how to define what constitutes a communications service provider, encrypted e-mail transmitters like the BlackBerry, social networking sites like Facebook and peer-to-peer messaging software like Skype will likely be included. The Obama administration prefers the broadest definition, which would include companies whose servers are operated outside of the United States, such as Canadian-based Research In Motion, maker of BlackBerry smartphones.

"We're not talking expanding authority," Federal Bureau of Investigation General Counsel Valerie Caproni told the Times. "We're talking about preserving our ability to execute our existing authority in order to protect the public safety and national security."

Federal law enforcement and national security officials have been demanding more control over Internet wiretapping, arguing that extremists and criminals are more likely to chat online than using telephones.

The proposal raises serious privacy concerns about users on the Internet, reminiscent of the uproar that followed Bush administration's expansion of thegovernment's wiretapping authority. It could also set an example for other companies to follow, the Times said.

"They basically want to turn back the clock and make Internet services function the way that the telephone system used to function," Vice President of the Center for Democracy and Technology James X Dempsey told the Times.

RIM has been dealing with this issue over the past few months. Several countries, including India and Saudi Arabia, threatened to ban BlackBerry services, claiming the device's e-mail encryption posed a national security risk. RIM agreed to give security officials "lawful access" to data; United States officials would like similar access under the proposed law.

Internet and phone networks are already required to have eavesdropping abilities thanks to a 1994 law called the Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act. While extending the wiretap authority to include digital networks and cell phones, and not just copper-wire phone systems, the law does not apply to communications service providers.

Under the current rules, investigators can intercept messages at the network company's switch. If the user is using a service that encrypts the messages between the computer and the servers, investigators have to go to the communications service provider to view the unscrambled content. While some service providers have the capability to intercept these messages, most do not. According to the Times report, many providers wait until they are served with wiretap orders before developing intercept capabilities.

However, some services, like peer-to-peer instant messaging software, encrypt messages between users, so even the provider cannot unscramble them. The proposed legislation will require these programs to be redesigned so that they can be unscrambled.

"They can promise strong encryption. They just need to figure out how they can provide us plain text," said Caproni.

According to the report, officials from the White House, Justice Department, National Security Agency, FBI and other agencies have been working on the proposals, but important elements still have to be worked out.

Iran admits Stuxnet worm infected PCs at nuclear reactor

Quantum computing is one step closer to reality, thanks to work done by a team of international scientists at the University of Bristol... Jeremy O’Brien however, certainly has an impressive designation as the Director of the Centre of Quantum Photonics in the United Kingdom, and he has a very interesting announcement to make: “We can say with real confidence that, using our new technique, a quantum computer could, within five years, be performing calculations that are outside the capabilities of conventional computers."

So, what exactly has the team of international researchers at the University of Bristol done? They have designed a photonic chip that works with photons, rather than the electrons that are used in conventional processors. The chip currently has “several [working] models”, and will apparently work by sending entangled photons down pathways/networks in a silicon chip. Together, the entangled photons will perform a “coordinated quantum walk”, and the outcome of this process will represent the “results of a calculation.”

Also called an optical chip, the photonic chip’s network of optical circuits allows for a quantum walk to occur with two photons and be detected, which is the underlying basis for the entire discovery. Previously, scientists had achieved a quantum walk with single photons, but with two photons, they were challenged by the requirement of ensuring that the two photons are exactly identical, and then take into account their particle-particle interaction within the circuit. Now that they have done it, the possibilities really open up, and, according to the same scientists, going from two to many photons will not be very hard, as the same principles apply. Each time you increase the number of photons, the number of possible outcomes increases exponentially, allowing scientists to simulate extremely complex situations and models. So, for now, the next goal is performing multi-photon walks.

The concept of the quantum walk comes from the mathematical concept of the random walk, which can be defined as the “trajectory of an object taking successive steps in a random direction”, whether in two or multi-dimensional space. A random walk takes special meaning when dealing with quantum particles, as randomness here is inherent at every step. With the trajectory provided by the coordinated quantum walks of two entangled photons, scientists have been able to perform a new kind of computation with newly developed algorithms, which will perform orders of magnitude faster than today’s processors.

Check out how small the photonic chip is, placed next to a UK penny.

Mr. O’Brien added that the software that could run on such a processor architecture had yet to be developed, and input-output devices would have to re-developed as well. The first real-world applications you can hope to see will be in the world of science, where simulations relying on the assimilation of millions of variables are required. All this is possible because of the inherent uncertain nature of quantum physics, which can allows for a single subatomic particle to be in several places at simultaneously: “unlike an electronic 'bit' in conventional computing, the use of quantum particles, or 'qubits,' permits parallel computing on a scale that would not be possible with conventional electronics.”

Image courtesy: Gizmag ; source : Digit

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What was known as the BlackBerry Bold 9800 is now officially the BlackBerry Torch, a QWERTY-slider phone that’s powered by a 624MHz Marvell processor, and runs on BlackBerry 6 OS. Some blogs in the United States have already got their hands on the device, which was exclusively launched on AT&T, and all of them have a lot to say about how the phone feels and functions. This is a roundup of some of the most insightful impressions

An ethical hacker demonstrated exactly what you can make with $1500 worth of equipment: a cell phone call interceptor. Using not much more than a laptop and two RF antennas, Chris Paget showed off his interception technology at DefCon 2010, convincingly proving just how unsecure2G GSM networks are.