IP: CDT/EFF Petition to FCC

[David Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

Civil Liberties Groups Ask FCC to Block Expansion of FBI Electronic
Surveillance Authority




The Center for Democracy and Technology and the Electronic Frontier
Foundation today filed a petition with the Federal Communications
Commission seeking to block the FBI from obtaining a major expansion of
government wiretapping authority under the "Communications Assistance
for Law Enforcement Act" (CALEA).




CDT and EFF allege that the FBI has tried to use the 1994 law to force
the telecommunications industry to install intrusive surveillance
features that threaten individual privacy and violate the scope of the
1994 law. Among other things, current plans for CALEA would provide law
enforcement with:


*       Access to the contents of digital messages without a search warrant -
Under the implementation scheme developed by the FBI and Industry, law
enforcement agencies would receive the full contents of digital
communications when they were only authorized to receive signaling or
addressing information. This would completely obliterate long standing
privacy protections which separate content from signaling information.


*       Real-time location tracking information on wireless phone users - The
FBI is seeking technical standards which would effectively turn the
cellular network into a nationwide, real-time location tracking system.




"The proposal threatens to undermine long standing Fourth Amendment
protections for private communications by granting the FBI access to the
contents of digital communications without probable cause that a crime
has been committed. " said Jerry Berman, CDT Executive Director.
"Citizens would have to rely on the good faith of law enforcement agents
to not look at the contents of digital communications delivered to them
under the lower standard," Berman added.




CDT also expressed concern that the FBI's proposal for real-time
location tracking through wireless networks would dramatically expand
law enforcement power. "CALEA explicitly prohibited any expansion of law
enforcement surveillance authority, " said Daniel Weitzner, CDT Deputy
Director. "The FBI's two year effort to force the industry to adopt
standards that amount to a broad expansion of government surveillance
power is a clear violation of both the spirit and intent of the law."
Weitzner added.




Enacted in 1994, CALEA was intended to ensure that law enforcement could
continue to conduct electronic surveillance in the face of changing
communications technologies, but explicitly prohibited any expansion of
law enforcement surveillance authority. The law requires telephone
companies to take affirmative steps to protect the privacy of
communications that the government is not authorized to intercept. The
law defers, in the first instance, to industry to develop technical
standards for meeting the requirements, and allows "any person" to
challenge the standards before the FCC if they are deficient or fail to
protect privacy. CDT and EFF filed the petition with the FCC under this
provision.




The full text of the CDT and EFF petition, along with detailed
background information on CALEA and the standards setting process, are
available online at http://www.cdt.org/digi_tele/




The Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) is a non-profit public
interest organization working to advance constitutional civil liberties
and democratic values in new communications technologies. CDT staff
worked on CALEA when it was before the Congress in 1994 and fought
successfully to ensure that the law did not expand law enforcement
surveillance authority and contained numerous public accountability
provisions.




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