WASHINGTON-In the FBI’s Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement implementation report, submitted Jan. 26 to Rep. Harold Rogers (R-Ky.) for review, the dates for actual CALEA hardware and software rollout remain outside of the October 1998 deadline.
Only two solutions providers-Northern Telecom Inc. and Bell Emergis-were able to offer even a partial product by that date; Lucent Technologies Inc. and Siemens Telecom Networks project product compliance in late 1999 and early 2000; and Motorola Inc.’s Cellular Infrastructure Group declined to make its dates available in a public document. Only Bell Emergis allowed its pricing to be made public.
According to CALEA deadlines set forth in 1994, wireless and wireline carriers would be eligible for reimbursement of hardware and software upgrades that would allow law-enforcement agencies access to isolated and intercepted wire and electronic communications and to any call-identifying information. During FY1998, a $114 million fund was set up for such reimbursement, but it remained untouched because of disputes between carriers and the FBI, in particular, over the FBI’s expanded needs list.
That fund will be carried over into FY1999, and President Clinton’s proposed budget has allotted another $100 million to be added to the existing fund. There are two potential catches to wireless CALEA reimbursement-no carrier will be able to install and deploy new digital-capable equipment until after the current deadline, leaving them liable for fines of $10,000 per day for each day they are in noncompliance; and there still is an industry problem with original network buildout dates that leave personal communications services operators outside of the cutoff dates for reimbursement, even though they are required to be CALEA compliant. Both matters would have to be rectified by modified legislation.
The FBI’s report, based on meetings with Nortel, Lucent, Motorola, Siemens and Bell Emergis, noted that at least one solution-based provider (Bell Emergis) is expected to make available specific switch-based CALEA solutions this year, that one major carrier may test a network-based CALEA solution early in 1998, that each of the companies said they had the technical ability to meet “the intent” of much of the FBI’s capabilities wish list and that agreements for continued cooperation are in place.
“According to solutions providers, the technical obstacles for some switches are so severe that the provision of certain CALEA capability requirements is either technically infeasible or cost-prohibitive,” the FBI wrote. “In these cases, the FBI has noted the solution provider as having a `partial’ ability to meet CALEA’s capability requirements. In other cases, technical limitations have led to discussions of alternative means of providing necessary evidentiary and minimization data to law enforcement.”
Due to nondisclosure agreements, much of the technical data resulting from these meetings was not included in the document, but the FBI said interested committee members would be briefed in private.
The 11-element “punch list” of the FBI’s reported digital wiretap needs includes everything from conversation content to notification of a call coming through to changes in a suspect’s service menu. However, the manufacturers cited several items on the list as being “technically difficult” and “extremely difficult” to implement.
Motorola, which will be upgrading its EMX 2500 and 5000 switches, has told the FBI that access to all dialing and signaling information, that notification of any call being made to any service on a subject’s wireless device, notification of any changes to a subject’s service and information on all digits dialed by a subject would be technically difficult to administer.
Nortel, which will make its DMS-100 family of switches CALEA compatible, said that information on all parties on a multiparty call, signaling and dialing information, in-band and out-of-band signaling and feature status messaging would be “very difficult,” but that those requirements will be addressed by different means. The separate breakout of all voices on a multiparty call also was characterized as “extremely difficult,” and Nortel offered the FBI another option, which the agency will evaluate.
Lucent’s 5ESS switches are capable of handling all of the FBI’s requests except for the separated voice delivery. Siemens also said its EWSD switches could handle all CALEA changes, but the company will phase them in over two or more software releases. Siemens did express concern with delivering call content and with dialed digit extraction; such features probably will not be available on Siemens equipment until 2001.
The Signaling System 7 network-based CALEA solution developed by newcomer Bell Emergis appears to be the application that will be ready for market by the original October deadline. SS7, the company said, is used in 90 percent of the access lines available nationwide. Several carriers, who chose to remain unnamed in the report, are willing to trial the product this year, and they will involve the FBI in the testing process. However, Bell Emergis will continue to hone the dialing and signaling requirement and the in- and out-of-band notification requirement, and it will address feature status messaging by another means.
What will all this cost? Lucent said its prices could change 100 percent but that it would have a better idea by Feb. 14; Nortel said its prices could drop 25 percent; Siemens and Motorola would not release any numbers; and Bell Emergis said $540 million would be enough to roll out a nationwide system, but that prices could drop through volume purchasing.
“Prices charged by solution providers may change depending on reimbursement strategies agreed to by industry and the government,” the FBI wrote. “Those strategies include, but are not limited to, possible per-access-line pricing and nationwide buyout [whereby the government funds feature development or purchases the results of the development efforts directly from the vendor. The solution is then made available to all carriers utilizing the specific switch.]”
It is unknown at this time what Congress will do regarding any change to CALEA dates following receipt of this report. A spokeswoman for Rep. Rogers said at press time that the congressman had not had time to review the report.
