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Representatives of the FBI's Electronic Surveillance Technology Section in Chantilly, Va., have met at least twice in the past three weeks with senior officials of the
The new rules are necessary, because terrorists could otherwise frustrate legitimate wiretaps by placing phone calls over the Internet, warns a summary of a July 10 meeting with the FCC that the FBI prepared. "Broadband networks may ultimately replace narrowband networks," the summary says. "This trend offers increasing opportunities for terrorists, spies and criminals to evade lawful electronic surveillance."
In the last year, Internet telephony (also called voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP) has
According to the proposal that the FCC is considering, any company offering cable modem or DSL service to residences or businesses would be required to comply with a thicket of federal regulations that would establish a central hub for police surveillance of their customers. The proposal has alarmed civil libertarians who fear that it might jeopardize privacy and warn that the existence of such hubs could facilitate broad surveillance of other Internet communications such as e-mail, Web browsing and instant messaging.
Under existing
Digital wiretapping
The origins of this debate date back nine years, to when the FBI persuaded Congress to enact a controversial law called the
Congress responded to the FBI's concern by requiring that telecommunications services rewire their networks to provide police with guaranteed access for wiretaps. Legislators also granted the FCC substantial leeway in defining what types of companies must comply. So far, the FCC has interpreted CALEA's wiretap-ready requirements to cover only traditional analog and wireless telephone service.
Derek Khlopin, regulatory counsel at the
In a letter to the FCC, the FBI wrote: "CALEA applies to telecommunications carriers providing DSL and other types of wireline broadband access."
Some members of Khlopin's trade association, such as Cisco,
The FBI's proposal has drawn criticism in regard to privacy issues.
A representative of DSL provider
The FBI proposal is before the FCC, which has jurisdiction over DSL and cable modem providers and is expected to rule on the matter this fall. "It's pending before the commission, and we plan to address the question," an FCC spokesman said.
How to follow the law
It's unclear what a broadband provider must do if the FCC extends CALEA's reach, and the regulations survive a possible court challenge from privacy groups such as the ACLU or network providers who do not wish to comply.
Martin King, an attorney in the FBI's general counsel's office who attended the July 10 meeting, said the bureau would not elaborate on its request to the FCC. "On this particular matter, we are going to decline to comment," King said.
"It's going to depend on what facilities they have," Boothby said. "When designing systems and configuring software and hardware, they have to preserve the government's ability to eavesdrop. Does it mean physical electrical closets? Does it mean an extra server in a secure room? It means as many varied things as there are variations in network design."
Lawrence Plumb, a spokesman for Verizon Communications, said: "How does a service provider architect its broadband network and equipment to be CALEA-compliant? The exact answer to 'how' isn't known."
Companies would be reimbursed for their costs to comply with CALEA. When enacting the law, Congress earmarked $500 million to reimburse telephone and cellular providers for their expenses.
Police encountered similar problems when wiretaps on customers using data services such as
FBI meetings
The FBI appears to have first presented its proposal to the FCC last year. But in the July 10 and July 22 meetings, the bureau extended it to say that if broadband providers cannot isolate specific VOIP calls to and from individual users, they must give police access to the "full pipe"--which, by including the complete simultaneous communications of hundreds or thousands of customers, could raise substantial privacy concerns.
A summary of the meeting prepared by the FBI said the FCC could "require carriers to make the full pipe available and leave law enforcement to perform the required minimization. This approach is already used when ISPs provide non-CALEA technical assistance for lawfully ordered electronic surveillance."
The July 22 meeting at the FCC included John Pignataro, deputy superintendent of Maryland's state police force, two attorneys for the FBI's Electronic Surveillance Technology Section, and Leslie Szwajkowski, the head of that section's policy unit. They met with a senior advisor to FCC Commissioner Kevin Martin. During the July 11 meeting, FBI representatives met with 10 officials from the FCC's Wireline Competition Bureau, its Media Bureau and the Office of Strategic Planning and Policy Analysis.
The meetings, according to summaries prepared by the FBI, stressed that "broadband telephony involves packet-mode communications, which are more difficult to intercept than circuit-mode communications. The need for CALEA-standardized broadband intercept capabilities is especially urgent in light of today's heightened threats to homeland security and the ongoing tendency of criminals to use the most clandestine modes of communication."
In an interview, however, a Vonage representative said the VOIP provider had never received a request from a police agency to do a live voice interception, though the company has been served with subpoenas for stored customer information. "We have been subpoenaed, I believe, several times for call records and call data," Vonage's Brooke Schulz said. "We've responded to those subpoenas very, very quickly. Because of the way our service is set up, we have all this data on hand, and it's very easy to do."
Schulz said if Vonage were to receive a proper request to perform a live voice interception, it would be trivial to comply with, because all the company's VOIP calls flow through central servers. "We are able to copy the data stream and send it in tandem to another location," Schulz said. "You can essentially send it to the law enforcement agency you need to send it to, as long as they have the proper equipment and the proper interconnect."
Because Vonage's network already is accessible to police armed with a legal wiretap order, Schulz said she was mystified by the FBI's proposal to the FCC. "We really don't know where it's coming from," she said.
Why the proposal?
The FBI declined to elaborate on the justification for its proposal. An FBI agent who attended the pair of meetings and spoke on condition of anonymity said that "if it's pending, we don't want to be talking about it."
One explanation for the proposal is that not all VOIP networks flow through a service that can be readily wiretapped. For instance, Pulver.com's
The best place to intercept those types of VoIP calls would likely be at the user's broadband provider.
A second explanation for the FBI's proposal is that, by requiring broadband providers to comply with CALEA, police would have an easier time wiretapping other types of Internet communications such as e-mail, Web browsing and instant-messaging services.
Baker, the CALEA attorney at Steptoe and Johnson, said: "It would be very difficult to set up a network so that you could only intercept voice packets and not the others. The likely result here is that you'll have modifications that are useful for law enforcement not just for voice packets but for other packets as well."
Yet another reason for the FBI's proposal, Baker said, is that the bureau is very interested in details about a VoIP phone call, not just the conversation itself. Those details, such as who was on the call, are called "
Some Internet providers have welcomed the FBI as an ally on this issue, which has arisen as part of an FCC proceeding over
FCC Chairman Michael Powell has indicated that he would like to move more Internet access services into the category of "information services," which have fewer regulations and likely would not be subject to CALEA. That alarms DSL providers such as EarthLink, which fear that deregulation means that former Baby Bells such as Verizon and BellSouth will raise their rates for access to the copper wire that runs to telephone subscribers' homes.
"The FBI is really an ally of sorts," said David Baker, EarthLink's vice president for law and public policy. "They're saying to the FCC, look, you guys are thinking of classifying everything as an information service, but you have to be aware of the implications."
EarthLink's Baker said "we're already seeing anticompetitive activities on the part of the phone companies even under the current rules. You do away with those rules, and you're ensuring that customers will have no choice but DSL provided by the phone company." Unless the FBI's proposal succeeds, he said, "everything that travels over a DSL connection, be it voice or e-mail, would be out of the reach of law enforcement. That would be a tremendous loophole and a breach of national security."
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UNITD
KENOSHA.Wi. 53142 April 28,2008
MEMO ADDRESSED TO THE UNITED STATES SENATE
I am a citizen of the United States and have been addressing several Senators with the issues and problems to follow
including Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama as well as several others and will in the near future be speaking in front of
you all because of Americans being held hostage by Navy personnel from Great Lakes Navy base as well as by
veterans used to Stalk and intimidate by the abuse of Power of the IRS and the United States Dept. of Justice. I
have been taken out of and kept from employment by them as they attempt a hostile search for money, i have my
phones tapped and computer hacked by government personnel spending alot of government budget following me
everyday for at least 8 months, all my family and past associates has been paid by them to create some ftctious story
because of a conspiracy, initated by the FBI from Chicago and brought to Wisconsin. All of this is a clear violation of
my Civil Rights and also the rights of my daughter who has been questioned and harrassed at school by them, she
is 5 years old. I have had to replace my computer 3 times because they are camped upstairs and i listen to them thru
the vents as they call themselves strategizing but not very well if I hear your every attempt to play on American
citizens.My family has had their cars as well as i have tampered by them in and attempt to get us or me to spend
money, they have raised bills above normal, been in my garage leaving lights on in an order to do so stopped my
emails from reaching their intended destinations and faked as the recipient, they have acted as operators and
fake being the person I called on the other line, I have been told by the police that they would not do anything
because they know who it is which is fither showing the attempt to keep me hostage. I have filed lawsuits and will
continue because I believe even that was manipulated by them as everything and everyone else has been, I have
talked to the security chief after calling the Chief of Great Lakes Navybase, no cooperation, Bush is who I believe
brought this because of corrupt judges from Chicago, after I brought this out to officials. American citizens who are
not terrorist being treated as if they are, I say send some more troops to war since we have so many of them to follow
people around everyday, someone is reimbursing them for this large price tag of surviellance. I see the plan must
be to discredit or in gov. terms attempt to burn me or ruin my career because they have some corrupt people in
the government.
sincerly,
Darryl Kinney 7301 98th Ave. UnitD
Kenosha,WI 53142 262-237-1310