- WASHINGTON - The Federal
Bureau of Investigation says the proliferation of telecommunications
services
is harming its ability to tap into criminal suspects' communications, and
it wants phone companies to make changes in their networks to improve
surveillance.
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- The demands to add software and equipment have roiled
the industry, which estimates it will cost more than $1 billion to comply
with the FBI requirements, said Albert Gidari, a telecommunications lawyer
at Perkins Coie LLP in Seattle, who has represented wireless companies
on surveillance issues. The demands, he said, are
"mind-boggling."
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- Several industry officials said the FBI essentially wants
direct access to voice communications, as the bureau now has with e-mail
through the snooping technology known as Carnivore. An FBI spokesman
declined
to comment on the matter.
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- The FBI's request, under the 1994 Communications
Assistance
to Law Enforcement Act, was in the works long before the Sept. 11 terrorist
attacks. But industry representatives said the nation's newfound focus
on security is emboldening law-enforcement agencies to interpret their
authority more broadly. "After Sept. 11, they're pushing for anything
and everything," said Terri Brooks, a Nokia Corp. manager involved
in the project.
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- In a confidential 32-page document distributed to
telecommunications
companies earlier during the month, the FBI said "many new
packet-based
services and architectures have been developed which impede or even
preclude
law enforcement's full and proper execution" of its investigative
powers. When communications are transmitted via packets, a message is
broken
into numerous pieces, each encoded so it can be transmitted separately
-- sometimes over different routes -- and then reassembled at its
destination.
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- The process makes it difficult to monitor communications.
Complicating matters, there are many different ways to send voice signals
via packet technology. Creating standards and technology for each of them
will be tough, industry officials say. "The FBI has learned that it's
really difficult to get everyone on the same page because the technology
is changing all the time and customer requirements vary a great deal,"
said Lee Tien, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San
Francisco advocacy group.
-
- To remedy the problem, the FBI issued "a set of
high-level needs ... considered necessary by law enforcement regardless
of the service that is being offered." Those include 24-hour
"real
time" monitoring of communications, alerts when a communication is
attempted and explanations why any communication fails to go
through.
-
- To make sure messages aren't missed, the FBI also said
it needs a higher level of reliability than the current standard for the
cellular market, where dropped calls are commonplace.
-
- Meeting the FBI's requirements could take as long as
two years, one executive said. With such time and expense looming, Gidari
suspects the FBI really is angling for a Carnivore-like system for tapping
voice calls. Carnivore allows the government to tap directly into the data
stream for e-mails to sift out the information it wants.
-
- Ed Hall, vice president for technology development at
the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Standards, said the FBI
already
has the tool to do what it wants, "and it's Carnivore."
-
- AT Wireless Services Inc., of Redmond, Wash., suggested
as much in an Aug. 17 Federal Communications Commission filing. "The
FBI has the technical capability to meet its surveillance needs"
through
Carnivore, the company said. The company asked why carriers should be
forced
to "modify their networks at considerable cost to provide a similar
surveillance capability." A spokesman for AT Wireless declined to
comment further.
-
- Others, however, said the FBI demands were predictable
and could be met using available software. Scott Coleman, a
surveillance-product
manager at SS8 Networks Inc. in San Jose, Calif., said: "There was
nothing new or radically different than what's been talked
about."
-
- The FBI is relying on the 1994 law, which requires phone
companies to modify networks to make it easier for government agents to
conduct authorized surveillance. The law applies to
"telecommunications
carriers" but not "information services," such as AOL Time
Warner Inc.'s America Online, and requires that privacy be maintained for
other messages. The result has been legal wrangling over what types of
communications fall under its provisions. [an error occurred while
processing
this directive]
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- Earlier this month, the FBI summoned about 100 industry
representatives to a closed-door meeting in Tucson, Ariz., to explain its
technical requirements. Companies represented included Verizon
Communications,
Cisco Systems Inc., and Motorola Inc. as well as about 10 FBI
officials.
-
- One participant said FBI officials refused to answer
most questions before the group, but would meet individually with companies
to discuss technical matters. "There was a hint in the presentation
that if somebody deployed a new technology and the FBI couldn't intercept
it, the FBI would expect the service provider to stop providing the
service"
until tapping methods were available, this person said.
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- Although most technical standards in the U.S. are
developed
through open meetings among engineers, the FBI has insisted on an
extraordinary
level of secrecy that slows the process. One attendee at the Tucson meeting
estimated it would take six months for the industry to agree on a standard
and another 18 to 24 months to modify telecommunications networks.
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