The Federal Bureau of Investigation wants to expand wiretapping law to cover your Internet connection and force ISPs and other providers to build in back door wiretapping capability into their networks.

The FBI intends to have a bill submitted in Congress which will expand the Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act to require router manufacturers to build in wiretapping capability, require ISPs to maintain hardware for, and provide on demand, logs of any of your activities, all the way down to instant messaging, and eliminate a reporting requirement under which the Department of Justice must say how many wiretaps it conducts and how much capacity it expects to need.

Under the new proposal, it appears that ISPs will have to pay for as much capacity as the FBI wants.

“The complexity and variety of communications technologies have dramatically increased in recent years, and the lawful intercept capabilities of the federal, state and local law enforcement community have been under continual stress, and in many cases have decreased or become impossible,” according to a summary accompanying the draft bill. — CNET News.com

That’s right, the Feds are having trouble spying on you, and want the ISPs not only to help, but to be forced by law to provide wiretaps and to pay for them.

Last year the Federal Communications Commission ruled that Voice over IP providers and broadband ISPs are covered under CALEA and must provide wiretap-friendly access to their networks to law enforcement personnel. An appeals court upheld the ruling in June, and the case may go to the Supreme Court.