WASHINGTON-There is no technical reason for carriers not to comply with the digital wiretap act, a senior government official said Wednesday.
“At this junction, it does not appear that there is a technical impediment to complying with CALEA,” said Julius Knapp, deputy chief of the FCC’s Office of Engineering and Technology.
With the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks just days away and Congress buzzing about the 9/11 Commission Report, the House telecommunications subcommittee held a hearing on CALEA.
“Unfortunately, when it comes to telecommunications technology, many terrorists are not as primitive as their evil and demented worldview. In fact, law enforcement raises the specter of terrorists exploiting perceived technological gaps with respect to certain services for which telecommunications carriers are unable to provide, or are unable to provide in useable form, the content of communications or related information as required by court order,” said Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), chairman of the House telecommunications subcommittee. “We must work carefully with telecommunications carriers and manufacturers to ensure that the technological standards for providing such access are driven by industry, which is in a better position than the government to find workable ways to build the proverbial ‘mousetrap’ without stifling innovation in this relatively nascent and dynamic marketplace.”
CALEA refers to the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act of 1994-10 years later CALEA has yet to be fully implemented while the telecommunications industry and law enforcement debate what features should be built into equipment to facilitate electronic surveillance. The Federal Communications Commission last month proposed new rules for implementing CALEA, which the industry believes will make it more expensive to design and build equipment.
The latest issue between law enforcement and the wireless industry is whether and when push-to-talk services should be CALEA-compliant. The FCC decided the first question last month when it said that PTT services that use Internet Protocol or packet-mode architectures are subject to CALEA. The commission is still reviewing some carrier requests to extend the deadline for PTT compliance with CALEA. The law-enforcement community has consistently fought against such requests, arguing that as far back as 1999 when the FCC ruled that the PTT service offered by Nextel Communications Inc. must be CALEA compliant, carriers knew their obligations.
“Some carriers have never questioned their legal obligations under CALEA or their corporate obligations to act responsibly where public safety and national security are at risk. For each and every carrier in this category, we recognize and applaud their leadership and responsibility. Unfortunately, however, there are also some carriers who have deployed their technologies without regard to law enforcement’s ability to execute court-ordered electronic surveillance and without regard to their corporate responsibility where public safety and national security are at risk,” said Laura Parsky, deputy assistant attorney general of the criminal division for the Department of Justice.
There appears to be some disagreement about whether CALEA applies to newer technologies with law enforcement arguing that it does and the telecommunications industry arguing that it does not.
“CALEA does not have as much agility as we need for the Internet world,” said Marcus Thomas, deputy assistant director of the FBI’S Investigative Technologies Division.
