WASHINGTON-Congress Friday passed legislation to give federal law enforcement the ability to negotiate directly with wireless carriers and manufacturers for network-wide digital wiretap upgrades of switches on a firm fixed-price basis.
Legislative language giving the Justice Department and FBI greater flexibility to implement the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act is included in an $8.8 billion catch-all emergency spending measure-itself attached to a military construction bill-that the House passed Thursday night and the Senate approved Friday before Congress recessed for the July 4, week-long holiday.
Under current law, guidelines for government reimbursement of wireless carriers that make software and hardware modifications to networks to comply with CALEA capacity and capability requirements are narrowly circumscribed and do not give law enforcement the ability to conduct system-wide buyouts of switches for the purpose of digital upgrades.
The Justice Department has tried different approaches to break CALEA-implementation gridlock. The department has signed agreements with Nortel Networks, Lucent Technologies Inc. and AG Communications to buy CALEA compliant software and give it to carriers.
Justice expects to close on similar deals with Siemens AG, Motorola Inc. and L.M. Ericsson within the next month.
“We view this as a win-win,” said Stephen Colgate, assistant attorney general for administration at the Justice Department.
“It allows us to negotiate directly with manufacturers and carriers for firm, fixed prices for CALEA-related expenses,” said Colgate. He added that the legislation offers carriers an alternative to simplify digital wiretap implementation in a way that saves money for the federal government and telecom carriers.
It is unclear whether industry was aware of CALEA legislation passed last week. The Justice Department and FBI said several major carriers approached them about the idea of paying a fixed price for system-wide switch upgrades.
The Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association did not return calls for comment and a spokesperson for the United States Telephone Association said she was unaware of the new digital wiretap legislation.
The CALEA law has sparked much fighting between the Justice Department and the telecom industry since the act’s enactment in 1994.
Indeed, two industry-driven lawsuits are pending that challenge CALEA rules adopted by the FBI and Federal Communications Commission.
The wireless industry, privacy advocates and others claim some FCC and FBI digital wiretap rules are unconstitutional and go far beyond what Congress intended. Moreover, there is concern over whether some carriers-personal communications services operators, for example-will be eligible for reimbursement and whether carriers can meet compliance deadlines if CALEA digital wiretap equipment is not readily available.
In the past, the FBI has responded to industry criticism by saying carriers simply want to minimize their costs.
Carriers faced a June 30 deadline to upgrade their networks to meet an industry interim CALEA standard, but have filed waivers for extensions that likely will be granted.
Additional FCC-approved digital wiretap capabilities must be deployed by wireless and wireline carriers by Sept. 20, 2001.
The telecom industry has claimed the $500 million authorized for CALEA payments to telecom carriers is far less than the $2 billion it predicts will be required for system modifications.
CALEA appropriations, owing to Justice Department-industry fighting and other reasons, has been slow in coming.
Congress partially addressed that issue last week.
The House passed a Commerce appropriations bill with nearly $280 million for the CALEA telecommunications carrier compliance fund. In addition to including CALEA flexibility language, the emergency spending-military construction bill passed by the House and Senate earmarked an additional $181 million for CALEA.
A House committee report underscores just how big a priority lawmakers believes digital wiretap has become for law enforcement.
“The committee notes that narcotics trafficking investigations are increasingly dependent on the use of intercepted communications, accounting for 72 percent of all court-authorized electronic surveillance actions. Court-approved electronic surveillance was vital to the recent successes of Operations Millennium and Impunity, which linked drug trafficking activity within the United States to the highest levels of the international cocaine trade. Recognizing that as criminal organizations utilize advanced technologies to elude law enforcement, U.S. law enforcement’s current drug intelligence and investigative capabilities have been eroded,” the House panel report stated.
