Pssssst? Is Anybody Monitoring This?

The Federal Communications Commission voted 5-0 last week to prohibit businesses from offering broadband or Internet phone service unless they provide police with backdoors for wiretapping access. Formal regulations are expected by early next year.

But the commissioners didn't give the FBI and its allies at the Justice Department and the Drug Enforcement Administration everything they wanted.

Right. They didn't get everything they wanted: AOL said it could not deliver the technology necessary to allow John Ashcroft to personally sodomize anyone he didn't like through AIM.

Maybe he can just sodomize chubby little Michael Powell instead.