WASHINGTON-House Commerce appropriations subcommittee Chairman Harold Rogers (R-Ky.) last week sternly questioned the Federal Communications Commission’s consideration of cost as a factor in arbitrating a long-running dispute between the Justice Department and telecom industry over setting technical standards associated with the digital wiretap law.
Earlier this year, FCC Chairman William Kennard was pulled in the other direction when several House Judiciary Committee members said the FCC by law must take into account the cost of implementing the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act of 1994.
While the wireless industry apparently has the ear of John Conyers (D-Mich.), Bob Barr (R-Ga.), Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) and Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) on the cost issue, the Justice Department and FBI seem to have a friend in Rogers.
“How can you independently verify the costs of companies?” Rogers asked Kennard. Kennard said agency engineers can estimate CALEA costs to carriers and manufacturers within reason.
When asked by Rogers whether FCC cost calculations could delay the establishment of CALEA technical standards, Kennard replied, “I hope not.”
The FCC chief said technical standards could be in place by May or June.
The wireless industry firmly insists the FCC must take into account the cost of implementing CALEA.
The Justice Department and the FBI, for their part, have tended to emphasize capability over cost. As such, law enforcement officials stubbornly refuse to embrace an industry interim CALEA standard because it lacks nine capabilities known as the punch list.
The wireless industry and privacy advocates have responded by accusing federal law enforcement of attempting to add constitutionally questionable wiretap features that go beyond the scope of CALEA.
While CALEA technical standards remain the subject of hot debate, the cost issue has become less of a flash point as a result of Justice’s decision to buy CALEA-compliant software from Nortel Networks and possibly others, and give it to carriers.
Indeed, in an April 14 letter to Attorney General Janet Reno, the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association, the Personal Communications Industry Association, the Telecommunications Industry Association and the U.S. Telephone Association reaffirmed their good faith agreement to work with federal law enforcement during a 60-day cease fire in the CALEA litigation.
Among other things, the groups said legislation may be required to implement the digital wiretap law.
Despite concern over FCC CALEA cost oversight and frustration generally with delays and disputes in the four-and-a-half years since the digital wiretap law’s enactment, Rogers said he was optimistic about the future.
“I think we have the broad parameters of a grand deal,” said Rogers.
Noting the importance of wiretaps to law enforcement and national security, Rogers added, “We’ve got a grasp on a final solution. There’s light at the end of the tunnel.”
Rogers reserved his sharpest criticism for a side deal between the FCC and General Services Administration-one Rogers said he learned of only after the fact-that has GSA lending the FCC funds to relocate its headquarters to the Portals.
In return, the commission is obliged to seek additional appropriations-$8.7 million in fiscal 2000-to reimburse the GSA as part of the FCC’s $230.8 million budget request. The Portals move is nearly complete.
“We were never a party to that agreement,” said Rogers.
“I can tell you right now,” he said, “that as long as I sit in this chair we will not provide the money.”
Kennard explained the FCC was caught in the middle, noting GSA ordered it to move to the Portals. “We’re trying to make the best of this situation,” said Kennard.
“I’m cautiously optimistic we can work out the details,” said Kennard.
But Rogers, claiming the Portals is 80 percent more expensive than market-based commercial real estate in the nation’s capital area, would not give in. “This is just not going to work,” he said.
“I will not participate in that type of fraud,” Rogers fumed.
Kennard said failure to secure funds to repay GSA, the government’s real estate broker, would be devastating to the FCC.
