Order broadens surveillance of Internet users

The legislation, known as the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) obliges telephone companies to make it possible for law enforcement agencies to intercept any phone conversations carried out over its networks, as well as making call records available. The act also 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.

An order issued by the Federal Communications Commission in August and first published in the Federal Register of October 13 extends the requirement of the 1994 legislation to cover broadband Internet access services, including wireless and voice-over-IP (VoIP) Internet telephony services.

Universities required to comply

The far-ranging implications of this are highlighted in an appeal being prepared by lawyers for the American Council on Education. The largest association of universities and colleges is preparing to appeal the order before the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. According to the New York Times, the universities do not question the government’s right to implement wiretaps but are appealing on the grounds of cost—in excess of $7 billion, according to estimates by some professionals. But the cost is itself indicative of the extent of the threat to privacy and democratic rights contained in the order.

Universities provide Internet access from hundreds of buildings across campuses and entire cities, including lounges, dorms, classrooms, laboratories, libraries and other areas that offer either wired or wireless Internet access.

Universities already comply with requests by law enforcement officials who produce court orders requiring wiretaps. At present, this requires them to work with campus officials to single out specific sites and install the equipment needed to carry out surveillance. The new legislation requires universities to have every Internet access point send all communications to a network operations center, where the data packets could be put together into a single package for delivery to a law enforcement agency.

If this is done, then the government will no longer require the collaboration of campus officials to monitor the activities of students or staff. The technology will be in place for automatic surveillance from a remote location without the knowledge of either the individuals being monitored or the institution itself.

Beyond the university campus, the order extends the 1994 wiretap provisions to Internet service providers, libraries, airports providing wireless services and municipalities that either provide Internet access to residents or plan to build their own Internet access networks, such as Philadelphia or San Francisco.

CALEA to cover Internet telephony providers

As well as extending CALEA to broadband Internet access providers, the order states, “We conclude that CALEA applies to providers of ‘interconnected VoIP services,’ which include those VoIP services that: (1) enable real-time, two-way voice communications; (2) require a broadband connection from the user’s location; (3) require IP-compatible customer premises question; and (4) permit users to receive calls from and terminate calls to the PSTN [public switched telephone network].”

This poses huge compliance problems for companies providing so-called peer-to-peer (P2P) services, where communications are not routed through a central server. Though the legislation requires compliance only from systems that allow connection to the PSTN, it nevertheless requires that on such systems, all calls be wiretappable, not just those interacting with the phone system.

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http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/oct2005/calea-o26.shtml