Over the weekend, this news item caught my eye. Among other things, this proposed legislation would:

Require any manufacturer of “routing” and “addressing” hardware to offer upgrades or other “modifications” that are needed to support Internet wiretapping.

The best commentary I’ve found on this is on the interesting people mailing list, and the most pointed comment can be found here:

First they came for the big ISPs
and I did not speak out
because I used a little ISP and ran my own server.

Then they came for the telcos
and I did not speak out
because I used VoIP.

Then they came to my little ISP
and I did not speak out
because I could still encrypt some traffic and control my own firewall.

Then they came for my router
and there was no one left
to securely ping back to me.

(With a respectful nod to Pastor Martin Niemöller)