In 1994, Congress passed -- and Bill Clinton signed -- the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, which, even before the Internet was popular, demanded federal snooping access to the Internet.

Tomorrow, May 14, 2007, is the deadline set forth in CALEA, by which time all ISPs must have installed backdoors into their systems to allow The Feds easy access. It's strange to think that this is a privacy-invading law that was passed before September 11. It was passed before the Oklahoma City bombings, even.

Thankfully (?), the law doesn't require that an ISP be able to decrypt encrypted customer communications, as long as it was the customer, and not the ISP, that encrypted the communications.

[Via Wired Threat Level blog.]