Ready to Three-Way Your Skype Calls with the Government?

Ever worried about sharing your living room, or bedroom, with the government? Well, if concerns about wiretap authority being allowed on Skype turn out to have merit, virtual conversations are likely to become much more formal. 

According to a story on CNN, there is concern that recent changes to how Skype routes its calls could make it easier for law enforcement to monitor Skype calls. It’s all very technical, but in a nutshell there is a belief that recent changes at Skype could make it easier for any government agency to break the direct computer-to-computer link currently used by Skype. Whenever a third party service is used, in this case Microsoft through a third-party routing computer, it makes it easier to eavesdrop on the conversation. It is unclear from the CNN story whether that could just include audio and not the graphics. Whichever it is, however, is making some people uneasy.

It has been reported that drug cartels and other criminal enterprises had taken to using Skype as a means to communicate because it was considered more secure and free of the likelihood of wiretaps.

So how do you feel about this? Do you think changes that open up Skype to wiretapping are warranted to prevent criminal activity? Or do you think it is unlikely to ever actually bring the government into your personal space and is just much ado about nothing?