FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: Graeme Browning
voice: 202-637-9800
email: gbrowning@cdt.org

CDT ASKS FCC TO PROTECT COMMUNICATIONS PRIVACY, SCALE BACK CALEA PLANS


March 26, 1998 -- The FBI has taken a law intended to preserve wiretapping in new digital networks and is using it to try to expand its surveillance capabiliities, the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) argued today in a petition filed with the Federal Communications Commission. http://www.cdt.org/digi_tele/980426_fcc_calea.html

The the FBI has pressured U.S. telephone companies to build location-tracking technology into wireless phone systems, CDT said in its petition. The telecommunications industry has also yielded to FBI pressure to allow law enforcement to "turn on a virtual spigot" in some networks and get the full content of someone's communications without adequate authority, CDT argued in urging the FCC to intervene in a dispute between telephone companies and the FBI over the meaning of the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA).

As switching systems in the nation's telephone networks age, they are being replaced with digital equipment which the FBI can' tap using its usual methods. Congress enacted CALEA almost four years ago in an effort to allow law enforcement to preserve its surveillance capabilities in the era of digital switching. The FBI and U.S. telephone equipment manufacturers and carriers have been negotiating ever since over the issue of which changes to the phone system should become mandatory by the October deadline for compliance with the law. These negotiations broke down last week.

CDT, which advocates on behalf of civil liberties and free speech in the new telecommunications media, asked the FCC to intervene in the implementation of CALEA "to protect the privacy interests of the American public" because:

  • The telecommunications industry, under "unremitting pressure from the FBI," has so far agreed to turn all wireless phones into location tracking devices. "This capability will allow the government, on the thinnest of grounds, to follow any of the forty million Americans who use wireless phones as they go about their daily lives, from home to work to shopping to friends' houses," CDT argued.

  • The telecommunications industry has also agreed, under FBI pressure, to provide law enforcement with the entire stream of data "packets" -- individual bundles of digital data -- from each email or telephone call covered by a surveillance order. Since packets contain the content of a call as well as the addressing information that allows packets to be reassembled when they reach their destination, the industry has essentially agreed to allow the government "with minimal authority to turn on a virtual spigot and get the full content of all a person's communications when the government is not authorized to intercept them, trusting to the government to sort through them and only read what it is entitled to. In an age when medical records, proprietary information, financial data and intimate thoughts are increasingly conveyed online, carriers should not provide the government with a stream of information it is not authorized to receive," the CDT petition noted.

    In addition to finding that compliance with CALEA is not reasonably achievable by the October deadline, CDT has also asked the FCC to indefinitely delay the effect of the law while a narrower implementation plan can be developed. The FBI is expected to soon ask the Commission to impose further surveillance capabilities under the law.

    The Center for Democracy and Technology, a non-profit organization, is dedicated to developing public policy solutions that advance civil liberties and democratic values in the new computer and communications media.

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