The Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), also known as the "Digital Telephony Act," is a

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

wiretapping Telephone tapping (also wire tapping or wiretapping in American English) is the monitoring of telephone and Internet-based conversations by a third party, often by covert means. The wire tap received its name because, historically, the monitorin ...

law passed in 1994, during the

presidency of Bill Clinton Bill Clinton's tenure as the 42nd president of the United States began with his first inauguration on January 20, 1993, and ended on January 20, 2001. Clinton, a Democrat from Arkansas, took office following a decisive election victory over ...

(Pub. L. No. 103-414, 108 Stat. 4279, codified at 47 USC 1001-1010). CALEA's purpose is to enhance the ability of

law enforcement agencies A law enforcement agency (LEA) is any government agency responsible for the enforcement of the laws. Jurisdiction LEAs which have their ability to apply their powers restricted in some way are said to operate within a jurisdiction. LEA ...

to conduct

lawful interception Lawful interception (LI) refers to the facilities in telecommunications and telephone networks that allow law enforcement agencies with court orders or other legal authorization to selectively wiretap individual subscribers. Most countries requir ...

of communication by requiring that telecommunications carriers and manufacturers of telecommunications equipment modify and design their equipment, facilities, and services to ensure that they have built-in capabilities for

targeted surveillance Targeted surveillance (or targeted interception) is a form of surveillance, such as wiretapping, that is directed towards specific persons of interest, and is distinguishable from mass surveillance (or bulk interception). Both untargeted and tar ...

, allowing federal agencies to selectively wiretap any telephone traffic; it has since been extended to cover broadband Internet and VoIP traffic. Some government agencies argue that it covers

mass surveillance Mass surveillance is the intricate surveillance of an entire or a substantial fraction of a population in order to monitor that group of citizens. The surveillance is often carried out by local and federal governments or governmental organizati ...

of communications rather than just tapping specific lines and that not all CALEA-based access requires a warrant. The original reason for adopting CALEA was the

Federal Bureau of Investigation The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice ...

's worry that increasing use of digital

telephone exchange telephone exchange, telephone switch, or central office is a telecommunications system used in the public switched telephone network (PSTN) or in large enterprises. It interconnects telephone subscriber lines or virtual circuits of digital syste ...

switches would make tapping phones at the phone company's central office harder and slower to execute, or in some cases impossible. Since the original requirement to add CALEA-compliant interfaces required phone companies to modify or replace hardware and software in their systems, U.S. Congress included funding for a limited time period to cover such network upgrades. CALEA was passed into law on October 25, 1994 and came into force on January 1, 1995. In the years since CALEA was passed it has been greatly expanded to include all

VoIP Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), also called IP telephony, is a method and group of technologies for the delivery of voice communications and multimedia sessions over Internet Protocol (IP) networks, such as the Internet. The terms Internet t ...

and

broadband Internet In telecommunications, broadband is wide bandwidth data transmission which transports multiple signals at a wide range of frequencies and Internet traffic types, that enables messages to be sent simultaneously, used in fast internet connections. ...

traffic. From 2004 to 2007 there was a 62 percent growth in the number of wiretaps performed under CALEAand more than 3,000 percent growth in interception of Internet data such as email. By 2007, the FBI had spent $39 million on its Digital Collection System Network (DCSNet) system, which collects, stores, indexes, and analyzes communications data.

Provisions of CALEA

In its own words, the purpose of CALEA is: :''To amend title 18,

United States Code In the law of the United States, the Code of Laws of the United States of America (variously abbreviated to Code of Laws of the United States, United States Code, U.S. Code, U.S.C., or USC) is the official compilation and codification of the ...

, to make clear a telecommunications carrier's duty to cooperate in the interception of communications for Law Enforcement purposes, and for other purposes.'' The U.S. Congress passed the CALEA to aid law enforcement in its effort to conduct criminal investigations requiring wiretapping of digital telephone networks. The Act obliges telecommunications companies to make it possible for law enforcement agencies to tap any phone conversations carried out over its networks, as well as making

call detail record A call detail record (CDR) is a data record produced by a telephone exchange or other telecommunications equipment that documents the details of a telephone call or other telecommunications transactions (e.g., text message) that passes through th ...

s available. The act stipulates that it must not be possible for a person to detect that his or her conversation is being monitored by the respective government agency. Common carriers, facilities-based broadband Internet access providers, and providers of interconnected Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) serviceall three types of entities are defined to be “telecommunications carriers” and must meet the requirements of CALEA. The CALEA Implementation Unit at the FBI has clarified that intercepted information is supposed to be sent to Law Enforcement concurrently with its capture. On March 10, 2004, the

United States Department of Justice The United States Department of Justice (DOJ), also known as the Justice Department, is a federal executive department of the United States government tasked with the enforcement of federal law and administration of justice in the United Stat ...

, FBI and

Drug Enforcement Administration The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA; ) is a United States federal law enforcement agency under the U.S. Department of Justice tasked with combating drug trafficking and distribution within the U.S. It is the lead agency for domestic en ...

filed a "Joint Petition for Expedited Rulemaking" in which they requested certain steps to accelerate CALEA compliance, and to extend the provisions of CALEA to include the ability to perform surveillance of all communications that travel over the Internetsuch as Internet traffic and VoIP. As a result, the FCC adopted its First Report and Order on the matter concluding that CALEA applies to facilities-based broadband Internet access providers and providers of interconnected (with the

public switched telephone network The public switched telephone network (PSTN) provides infrastructure and services for public telecommunication. The PSTN is the aggregate of the world's circuit-switched telephone networks that are operated by national, regional, or local telep ...

) Voice-over-Internet-Protocol (VoIP) services. In May 2006, the FCC adopted a "Second Report and Order", which clarified and affirmed the First Order: * The CALEA compliance deadline remains May 14, 2007. * Carriers are permitted to meet their CALEA obligations through the services of "Trusted Third Parties (TTP)"that is, they can hire outside companies, which meet security requirements outlined in CALEA, to perform all of the required functions. * Carriers are responsible for CALEA development and implementation costs.

Technical implementation

For Voice and Text messaging, CALEA software in the central office enables wiretap. If a call comes in for a number on the target phone a "conference bridge" is created and the second leg is sent to law enforcement at the place of their choosing. By law this must be outside of phone company. This prevents law enforcement from being inside the phone company and possibly illegally tapping other phones. Text messages are also sent to law enforcement. There are two levels of CALEA wiretapping: * The first level only allows that the "meta data" about a call be sent. That is the parties to the call, the time of the call and for cell phones, the cell tower being used by the target phone. For text message, the same information is sent but the content is not sent. This level is called "Trap and Trace". * The second level of CALEA wiretap, when permitted, actually sends the voice and content of text messages. This is called "Title III" wiretap. USA telecommunications providers must install new hardware or software, as well as modify old equipment, so that it doesn't interfere with the ability of a law enforcement agency (LEA) to perform real-time surveillance of any telephone or Internet traffic. Modern voice switches now have this capability built in, yet Internet equipment almost always requires some kind of intelligent deep packet inspection probe to get the job done. In both cases, the intercept function must single out a subscriber named in a warrant for intercept and then immediately send some (headers-only) or all (full content) of the intercepted data to an LEA. The LEA will then process this data with analysis software that is specialized towards criminal investigations. All traditional voice switches on the U.S. market today have the CALEA intercept feature built in. The IP-based "soft switches" typically do not contain a built-in CALEA intercept feature; and other IP-transport elements (routers, switches, access multiplexers) almost always delegate the CALEA function to elements dedicated to inspecting and intercepting traffic. In such cases, hardware taps or switch/router mirror-ports are employed to deliver copies of all of a network's data to dedicated IP probes. Probes can either send directly to the LEA according to the industry standard delivery formats (c.f. ATIS T1.IAS, T1.678v2, et al.); or they can deliver to an intermediate element called a mediation device, where the mediation device does the formatting and communication of the data to the LEA. A probe that can send the correctly formatted data to the LEA is called a "self-contained" probe. In order to be compliant, IP-based service providers (broadband, cable, VoIP) must choose either a self-contained probe, or a "dumb" probe component plus a mediation device, or they must implement the delivery of correctly formatted data for a named subscriber on their own.

Controversy

The

Electronic Frontier Foundation The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is an international non-profit digital rights group based in San Francisco, California. The foundation was formed on 10 July 1990 by John Gilmore, John Perry Barlow and Mitch Kapor to promote Internet ...

(EFF) warns that: * CALEA makes US software and hardware less attractive for worldwide consumers. * CALEA is a reason to move

research and development Research and development (R&D or R+D), known in Europe as research and technological development (RTD), is the set of innovative activities undertaken by corporations or governments in developing new services or products, and improving existi ...

out of the US. * CALEA-free devices will probably be available in the

grey market A grey market or dark market (sometimes confused with the similar term " parallel market") is the trade of a commodity through distribution channels that are not authorized by the original manufacturer or trade mark proprietor. Grey market pr ...

. Journalist Marc Zwillinger from the ''

Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...

'' explains his concerns with proposed revisions to the CALEA that would require Internet companies to provide law enforcement with a method of gaining access to communication on their networks. Zwillinger warns this new mandatory access could create a dangerous situation for multinational companies not being able to refuse demands from foreign governments. This governments could “threaten financial sanctions, asset seizures, imprisonment of employees and prohibition against a company’s services in their countries." In addition, the creation of this new mechanism could create an easier way for hackers to gain access to the U.S. government's key. Moreover, the U.S. telephone network and the global internet differ in that U.S. telephone carriers “weren’t responsible for decrypting communications unless the carrier possessed the decryption key. In fact, CALEA’s legislative history is full of assurances that the Department of Justice and FBI had no intention to require providers to decrypt communications for which they did not have the key.” Therefore, a revision of the CALEA cannot necessarily secure companies from providing data on their devices during criminal investigations to foreign governments.

Lawsuits

Originally CALEA only granted the ability to wiretap digital telephone networks, but in 2004, the

(DOJ),

Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE), commonly referred to as the ATF, is a domestic law enforcement agency within the United States Department of Justice. Its responsibilities include the investigation and preven ...

(ATF),

(FBI), and

(DEA) filed a joint petition with the

Federal Communications Commission The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that regulates communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable across the United States. The FCC maintains jurisdicti ...

(FCC) to expand their powers to include the ability to monitor

and

broadband In telecommunications, broadband is wide bandwidth data transmission which transports multiple signals at a wide range of frequencies and Internet traffic types, that enables messages to be sent simultaneously, used in fast internet connections. ...

Internet communicationsso that they could monitor Web traffic as well as phone calls. The

has filed several lawsuits to prevent the FCC from granting these expanded domestic surveillance capabilities. The FCC's First Report and Order, issued in September 2005, ruled that providers of broadband Internet access and interconnected VoIP services are regulable as “telecommunications carriers” under CALEA. That order was affirmed and further clarified by the Second Report and Order, dated May 2006. On May 5, 2006, a group of higher education and library organizations led by the

American Council on Education The American Council on Education (ACE) is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) U.S. higher education association established in 1918. ACE's members are the leaders of approximately 1,700 accredited, degree-granting colleges and universities and higher educatio ...

(ACE) challenged that ruling, arguing that CALEA did not apply to them. On June 9, 2006, the D.C. Circuit Court summarily denied the petition without addressing the constitutionality. American Council on Education vs. FCC,

United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (in case citations, D.C. Cir.) is one of the thirteen United States Courts of Appeals. It has the smallest geographical jurisdiction of any of the U.S. federal appellate co ...

Decision 05-1404(pdf)
June 9, 2006

References

External links

Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement ActPDFdetails
as amended in the GPObr>Statute Compilations collection
Surveillance United States federal communications legislation United States federal criminal legislation Privacy of telecommunications Privacy law in the United States Mass surveillance Encryption debate