WASHINGTON-While carriers, manufacturers and the FBI continue to argue about digital wiretap implementation, the wireless telecom industry is quietly lobbying Congress to keep personal communications services and digital cellular licensees from having to pay for equipment changes.
Under the 1994 digital wiretap law, known officially as the Communications Assistance and Law Enforcement Act, telecom carriers that deploy systems after Jan. 1, 1995 or that perform major upgrades to existing systems after that date are not eligible to be reimbursed for costs associated with CALEA compliance.
That means new PCS licensees have to foot the bill incorporating software and hardware into their networks that meet FBI eavesdropping requirements.
It also means that cellular carriers converting from analog to digital technology after January 1995 have to pay for wiretap modifications.
And that, according to the FBI, is what is driving the digital wiretap controversy that erupted just more than a week ago in Los Angeles when an industry technical committee rejected what it characterized as a push by law enforcement to go beyond the law by requiring ongoing location identification of pocket phones and pager subscribers.
One FBI official disagreed, saying the wireless industry is “intentionally muddying the waters.”
He said AT&T Wireless Services Inc.-the nation’s top cellular carrier-is balking at FBI wiretap requirements because the digital transition that has occurred since January 1995 will preclude the wireless giant from recovering the costs of wiretap modifications.
Indeed, AT&T and the FBI-months before the Los Angeles eruption-were arguing about legal, technical and economic issues related to CALEA implementation.
“Cost is most definitely a factor,” said Roseanna DeMaria, vice president of business security at AT&T Wireless’ Kirkland, Wash., offices.
But she said money is not the driver.
“We’re dealing with dates that Congress couldn’t have possibly put in the context of 1996 where we have a new telecom law and we don’t even have an industry standard for CALEA,” said DeMaria.
The time crunch DeMaria refers to is quite real.
Assuming a new industry wiretap standard is approved by next June, that only leaves 18 months for wireless carriers to come into technical compliance with CALEA.
As such, the wireless industry may try to get a congressional extension of the law’s Oct. 25, 1998 effective date.
The FBI, according to industry, retreated on its technical proposal in a Telecommunications Industry Association meeting in Dallas last week. The FBI disputes that, saying it is standing firm on its Electronic Surveillance Interface plan.
Ironically, the dust up between the wireless industry and the FBI could potentially play into the hands of lawmakers, like Rep. Bob Barr (R-Ga.), who are reluctant to approve appropriations for CALEA implementation.
Congress authorized $500 million for CALEA in 1994, but no money has been appropriated to date. To get around Barr and civil libertarians-who raise constitutional privacy questions-House and Senate lawmakers have proposed setting up a fund into which law enforcement and intelligence agencies can contribute leftover, year-end monies to compensate wireless and wireline carriers eligible for wiretap modification reimbursement.
However, the FBI is hoping to get some or all of the $100 million direct appropriations for CALEA that President Clinton requested for fiscal 1997, which begins tomorrow.
“I think reasonable people can work together,” said Thomas Wheeler, president of the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association.
