WASHINGTON-The Department of Justice is pointing to contracts it signed with four manufacturers to show it is cost-effective for telecom carriers to add additional capabilities to their networks to enhance digital wiretapping.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit told the Federal Communications Commission Aug. 15 it had to justify the costs associated with including four of six of the additional capabilities in the technical standard implementing the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act of 1994. The court also told the FCC it needed to explain its rationale for wanting additional items included in the technical standard.
Last month the FCC asked the players in the CALEA drama for comments on how the agency should interpret and implement the court’s ruling.
In its comments, the Justice Department for the first time acknowledged that it has signed cooperative agreements with four manufacturers covering 85 percent of the wireless and wireline switches in the United States.
Previously, DOJ had only released details of its agreement with Nortel Networks. Now details for Lucent, Siemens and AGCS also have been released.
Lucent is being paid $110 million to upgrade the 5ESS switch to be compliant not only with the industry’s J-standard, but also with the four disputed capabilities. Siemens is receiving $20 million for its wireline DCO switch.
As part of the agreements, the manufacturers must give the upgrade to carriers for free after receiving a right-to-use payment from some carriers included in the agreement. It appears the government will reimburse carriers for the right-to-use license fee.
The thrust of the DOJ/FBI comments is that the costs of upgrading the switch do not increase if the additional capabilities are added.
“Certain CALEA implementation costs will be incurred regardless of whether the four punch-list capabilities are reinstated or not. These costs are inherent in the process of making equipment CALEA-compliant, and would be incurred even if the [technical standard was] left in its original form. Because the punch-list capabilities are not the source of these costs, such costs are irrelevant to the [FCC’s] application of [CALEA’s] cost criteria to the punch-list capabilities themselves,” said the government.
Not surprisingly, DOJ and the FBI said the capabilities are within the scope of CALEA.
By contrast, the telecom industry told the FCC it cannot justify adding the four capabilities to the technical standard. The privacy community also noted the additional capabilities are beyond the scope of CALEA.
The arguments are so old and so redundant that one major carrier-SBC Communications Inc.-refused to respond to the FCC’s request for comment.
“SBC believes that the comments and reply comments which it submitted to the commission [in 1998 and 1999] prior to the commission’s release of its [rules] in this proceeding sufficiently address the items raised to the public notice and would refer these pleadings to the commission’s attention,” said SBC.
The District Circuit also ruled that transmitting entire packets of data could violate the wiretap act. Talk about packet-mode data impacts computer and software manufacturers and brought them into the debate, Cisco Systems Inc. pointed out.
Cisco believes the District Circuit’s decision leaves the computer and telecommunications industries unsure about what it will take to comply with a pen register order. Because the Sept. 30 deadline for complying with CALEA is fast approaching, Cisco urged the FCC to provide guidance and to suspend the deadline.
