With the advent of open communications and the ease that a person can intercept messages passed from computer to computer came a fear for privacy. The result: most communication devices and protocols nowadays include a layer of encryption. The fact that encryption enables simple, mostly-private communication is frustrating the US government’s policing agencies in that they can no longer simply grab conversations directly off the wire. The result: The Obama administration is looking to forward policies that will require telecomm carriers and companies to enable back-doors for government sanctioned surveillance.

According to Yahoo! News, the bill, slated by the White House for submission early next year, will require a number of changes to the technology infrastructure of many communication networks:

The new regulations that would be sent to Congress next year would affect American and foreign companies that provide communications services inside the U.S. It would require service providers to make the plain text of encrypted conversations — over the phone, computer or e-mail — readily available to law enforcement, according to federal officials and analysts.

The mandate would likely require companies to add backdoors or other changes to the systems that would allow a wiretap to capture an unscrambled version of a conversation.

Those affected by the changes would include online services and networking sites such as Facebook and Skype, as well as phone systems that deliver encrypted e-mail such as BlackBerry.

Of course, it’s already very easy for law enforcement to intercept communications via Internet and wireless—but if it’s encrypted already they’ll have a tremendously difficult time attempting to unravel the message buried underneath.

Legal experts and law enforcement laud the new law because it will enable them a greater ease of intercepting communication that has been discouraged by the ubiquity of encryption across services to protect customers. While advocates argue that this will be expensive, government officials are quick to point out that many of these services are already bowing to similar pressure to do the same for foreign governments like that of Afghanistan. They’re falling behind the curve, they say, and it’s creating a security rift that didn’t exist when wiretapping meant a simple two-wire-splice on a nearby phone line and a speaker.

The suggested change to law has drawn a lot of criticism from both the telecomm industry and citizen civil rights and privacy groups. Not just about the prohibitive cost of modifying networks to achieve what law enforcement desires, but fears about grossly expanded capabilities of law enforcement to reach into and see private communications. The act has been crowed as a “huge privacy invasion” by the American Civil Liberties Union, who cite the effortlessness that law enforcement acquires information gathering warrants already. But the real kicker, which the ACLU’s legislative council Christopher Calabrese hit on the head is, “This proposal will create even more security risks by mandating that our communications have a ‘backdoor’ for government use and will make our online interactions even more vulnerable.”

However, I will argue to my readers that this is already a problem.

When using a system—even if it touts itself as already encrypted to protect your privacy—for secure communications always assume it’s already compromised. If you really need to communicate privately over the Internet (and interception is extremely easy) encrypt using your own software before passing it through the encrypted network of the telecomm carrier, Facebook, IM, or whatever. Unless you and the recipient control your own private communication at the end points, you can be certain that someone else encrypting it for you can already break into their own security.

We will have to keep an eye out for this bill when it appears and examine how the communications and technology industry—and also the social industry if Facebook is on the line—will have to bend to accommodate should it become law.