It’s rare to see our political leaders use common sense when making decisions, so when they do, we should celebrate. House Republican leaders led by House Minority Leader John Boehner have reportedly sent a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi asking her to allow the use of Skype for video conferencing purposes. Broadband Breakfast quotes the following bits from the letter:
Among these barriers is the current House rule prohibiting members of Congress from using certain video-conferencing software applications such as Skype…often expensive, video teleconferencing activities with their constituents, but forbid them from using Skype – which is practically free – for such activities…We are certain that Skype, an increasingly relevant communication tool for Americans already widely used in the private sector, could be easily implemented in Congress in a manner that would not reduce the security of the House IT infrastructure.
Indeed, Skype is no longer a curiosity among early adopters. With more than 560 million subscribers, many of which are in the U.S., it makes perfect sense for politicians to use the technology.
Good to see that technology makes everybody’s life easy! We should encourage to use inexpensive technologies in our daily life.
Makes perfect sense, Skype is efficient to use and cost effective.
It is free — and there is nothing wrong with that 😉
I suspect Skype’s privacy policies may be the issue. It’s free, but it’s likely not going to pass congressional privacy compliance policies. Perhaps Congress is not too keen on that level of transparency. And does Skype really want to respond to all those Freedom of Information requests? Seems practical, however, for all but the military and HLS conferences. Just one citizen’s thoughts…
I see a lot wrong with it as it is based on P2P and is totally insecure! I will add I work in the Video Conferencing business. Skype is great for personal use, not business or this!
@Stephen: Any chance you can back up your claims that it’s totally insecure?
Totally insecure, my left elbow. If Skype is so secure that the German Bundeskriminalamt needs to circumvent it by physically installing keyloggers to crooks’ computers, it is darn well secure enough…
Staci Pies, Skype’s Director of Government & Regulatory Affairs, just posted something to the company’s blog on this topic. You can read her comments at http://blogs.skype.com/en/2010/07/skype_opening_up_the_dialogue.html.