The true end of the end

[mbyron]

Originally Posted by UMP25

Here's a question for you or anyone else who might know the answer: is it possible to tap a VoIP phone line? Now, we all know that authorities when needed can tap a regular phone line to listen in, but how is it done when both parties talking are using VoIP service? My brother and I got on this subject last night, and we were curious as to how it would be done. As a former AT&T employee many moons ago, I know that tapping landline phones is relatively easy.

VoIP, as you probably know, goes over the internet. It's easy to intercept internet signals: just put your sniffer somewhere on the target's route. So the question comes down to whether the signal is interpretable, which depends on whether or not it's encoded. As far as I know, VoIP signals are not routinely encoded, and that's partly for bandwidth considerations.