I was wondering under which country / countries skypes law falls. A close friend of mine is stuck in the middle of some legal issues at the moment, and his wife is quite paranoid about their phones being tapped. It has happened before, and sadly over here it was used as justification to warrent an arrest. After explaining skype to him, and that I use it as my US landline phone, whereas I'm actually traveling a lot / in germany now. So he asked me if the police would legally be justified to tap his skype phone. I was stumped. If they have the right to tap his personal phone, would they have the right to tap into his skype phone as well? What about if the phone number was an international one.. Would they still be able to access it because its going over his german ISP? Any help here would be greatly appreciated.. Thanks
Skype started off with its headquarters in Luxembourg but since 2005 it is an eBay company which as you know in US-based. I would think if it is ever tapped, they will need to have a court order. I am not sure about the laws governmenting wire tapping so I will not comment on that.
Check for laws concerning the monitoring of Internet usage. If they can legally tap into his phone conversations, I would think that they have similar laws regarding the Internet.
I would say that they must have court order for regular phone line. This would mean they would have one for isp and anything he does on it. I think they would listen to all calls made on skype also. It would be harder for them to get court order for skype records if it is in another country then he is in.
Ah I see, thanks. I was hoping that getting an international phone number (going via USA or china or whatever) would affect it, because I figured the numbers would be properties of that respective country? Either way I can see that it would all go via his ISP But to get into it, they'd have to know he uses skype to begin with? Thanks for the help guys +rep