WASHINGTON-Tucked quietly away in the House commerce appropriations bill last week was a Clinton administration-inspired fund into which intelligence and law enforcement agencies can contribute to reimburse wireless and wireline carriers that modify their networks to comply with a 1994 wiretap law.
That the GOP-led Congress and the White House are taking such a discreetly roundabout approach to funding the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act is testament to the huge success freshman Congressman Bob Barr (R-Ga.) has had in killing each and every attempt by lawmakers over the past year-and-a-half to appropriate monies for a program authorized at $500 million for fiscal years 1995 through 1998.
Today, CALEA remains penniless and troubled.
President Clinton sought $100 million for CALEA for fiscal 1997. After being told that its request could not be accommodated, the White House approached House and Senate intelligence committees with the idea of incorporating voluntary funding for CALEA within their authorization bills. Barr blocked the move just as he had stripped CALEA funding from budget and anti-terrorism bills last year.
Ever since the October 1994 enactment of CALEA, the purpose of which is to improve law enforcement’s ability to conduct wiretaps on advanced telecommunications systems, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has been seeking-without luck-federal dollars to help it implement the legislation.
In that regard, the FBI is working with industry to establish technical guidelines for wiretapping and accounting procedures to enable carriers to recover the cost of making their networks wiretap-ready. Telecom carriers have to be capable of accommodating wiretap requirements by October 1998.
Yet, if the funding drought continues, CALEA will be without the teeth that law enforcement was counting on to combat increased drug trafficking, terrorism and other crimes.
An increase in state and federal wiretaps since Clinton took office is due primarily to violation of narcotics laws, according to the government’s 1995 wiretap report.
Some lawmakers, like Barr, are leery about the FBI and its ability to implement the digital telephony legislation in a lawfully and fiscally responsible manner. It is alleged, for example, that the FBI tends to over-engineer technology and underestimate program costs.
Upon returning from an FBI briefing at Quantico, Va., Barr told FBI Director Louis Freeh in a May 30 letter he was concerned “that the Bureau has yet to settle on precise and workable goals or guidelines for implementation with industry.” Barr also said he had “not seen adequate proposals specifically addressing issues surrounding protections for vitally important civil liberties.”
As such, Barr has rekindled a policy debate that many believed was behind Congress.
Barr, a former Reagan-appointed U.S. attorney and Central Intelligence Agency employee with ties to the National Rifle Association, may yet quash the Telecommunications Carrier Compliance program that is attached to the Commerce appropriations bill.
“I have tried to work with the Bureau up front, face-to-face and as responsibly as I can to learn and to deal fairly with digital telephony issues,” said Barr. “Unfortunately, every time I turn around the Bureau is trying another end run with a different committee or subcommittee to obtain funding for CALEA.”
Congressional staffers say that while they’re baffled how Barr holds so much sway over the digital wiretap issue, they believe his ties to NRA give him exceptional clout at a time when the Justice Department, FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms are under fire from Republicans for their handing of incidents in Waco, Texas, and Ruby Ridge, Idaho.
Under CALEA, paging, cellular, specialized mobile radio and other telecom carriers with infrastructure deployed by Jan. 1, 1995, are not obligated to alter their networks for eavesdropping purposes if the government does not agree to reimburse them.
However, wireless carriers that upgrade from analog to digital technology would have to comply with new wiretap requirements. Personal communications services systems being constructed throughout the nation will have to come into compliance with CALEA.
Meanwhile, network capacity requirements for wiretapping and cost recovery guidelines remain unclear. The wireless telecommunications industry has been frustrated by the FBI’s handling of the matter.
“It is not reasonable to require carriers to provide meaningful comments on the cost recovery rules proposed to implement*…*CALEA in the clear absence of the specific capability and capacity requirements,” said the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association in a filing with the FBI last week.
The Personal Communications Industry Association said that because “industry technical requirements are still unresolved-and no compliant equipment is currently available-[CALEA] should be amended to allow carriers to recover the cost of modifying systems that have been purchased since Jan. 1, 1995.”
The trade group asked that wireless and wireline carriers be allowed to use their own accounting systems in seeking reimbursement from the U.S. attorney general.
