WASHINGTON-The Department of Justice would like Congress to re-examine the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act of 1994 but cannot say why revisions are needed, according to testimony delivered Wednesday at a hearing on Voice over Internet Protocol held by the Senate Commerce Committee.
“We feel it needs to be re-examined given all of these new technologies,” said Laura Parsky, deputy assistant attorney general of the criminal division of the Justice Department.
Under tough questioning by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Parsky was unable to provide a reason for wanting to change CALEA and especially to include VoIP technologies.
“You have to convince us that you need this,” said Wyden. “We need specific examples of what you cannot do now and where the law falls short. . You are looking for a remedy for a problem that you cannot identify.”
A civil libertarian critical of DoJ’s implementation of CALEA said DoJ and the FBI don’t want to have to go to various places to obtain wiretap information because they liked it when Ma Bell was the only telephone company.
“Thirty years ago life was simple. There was Ma Bell. There was one-stop shopping. It was very easy for law enforcement. They got everything from one place, one switch, one system and this Congress decided as a matter of public policy that we needed a different approach. We needed competition. We needed innovation,” said James Dempsey, executive director of the Center for Democracy & Technology. “Law enforcement keeps up with this technology but they are going to have to go to different places to find the different pieces of information. We have broken up this network. To try to put that network back together in a single intercept point that gives everything they want in a neat tied-up package-I don’t think that is a feasible policy objective, and it is inconsistent with other objectives.”
Dempsey used cell phones as an example of law enforcement keeping up with technology. “Everyone has a cell phone, they have an e-mail account, they have a wireline home phone number. That is life. We have reaped huge benefits from it. The fact is the terrorists and drug dealers have not found a haven. Eighty percent of the interceptions last year were on cell phones. The criminal who thinks that they may be getting something by having cell phones and walking around is cooking his own goose,” he said.
