FBI Pushes Telecoms for Network Changes

R. A. Hettinga rah at shipwright.com
Wed Nov 21 07:51:40 EST 2001


http://interactive.wsj.com/archive/retrieve.cgi?id=SB1006295250378342720.djm&template=printing.tmpl



November 21, 2001

Special Report: Aftermath of Terror

FBI Pushes Telecoms for Network Changes
To Ease Surveillance of Criminal Suspects

By JESS BRAVIN and DENNIS K. BERMAN
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL


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.

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."

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.

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.

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.
Call to Duty
The FBI says new telecommunications services are interfering with its
surveillance ability. Here are some of the needs it has for telecom
providers who are using the new technologies:

*	Real-time, full-time monitoring.
*	Ability to lay multiple wiretaps at one time.
*	Interceptions that are undetectable to all parties except law enforcement.
*	Reliability of interceptions at least equal to reliability of
communications services provided the subject of the wiretap.


Source: Federal Bureau of Investigation

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, Mr. 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&T 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&T 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.

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.

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.

Write to Jess Bravin at jess.bravin at wsj.com1 and Dennis K. Berman at
dennis.berman at wsj.com2
------------------------------------------------------------------------
URL for this Article:
http://interactive.wsj.com/archive/retrieve.cgi?id=SB1006295250378342720.djm
Hyperlinks in this Article:
(1) mailto:jess.bravin at wsj.com
(2) mailto:dennis.berman at wsj.com
------------------------------------------------------------------------



-- 
-----------------
R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'



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