subject: War of words rages over Internet taps posted: Fri, 16 Apr 2004 09:12:55 +0100
[In the UK, three men were recently released without charge after
being held on suspicion of murder. The police had illegally tapped
conversations between the men and their lawyers (a breach of their
human rights, denying them access to a fair judicial system).
Although, that was the third time this particular lawyer had been
illegally bugged in such a manner; in the first case the accused also
walked free, while the second is apparently heading the same way.]
By Kevin Poulsen, SecurityFocus Apr 14 2004 6:35PM
The public comment period on a Justice Department proposal to make
the Internet easier to wiretap ended Monday with most of the filed
comments tracing a clean line between two opposing camps: on the
government's side, federal, state and local law enforcement agencies
who perform wiretaps, allied with companies who sell surveillance
equipment and services; on the other, Internet companies who would be
forced by the plan to make changes to their networks, along with
advocacy groups concerned about slowed innovation and an incursion on
Internet privacy.
The controversy kicked off last month when the Department of Justice,
the FBI and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration jointly
petitioned the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to immediately
direct broadband providers to modify their networks to be more easily
wiretapped by law enforcement, and to begin an "expedited rulemaking"
of new regulations that would mandate that any new communications
technology be certified as wiretap-ready by the government before
launch. The petition capped over a year of low-key lobbying at the
commission by Justice and FBI lawyers seeking to expand the reach of
the 1994 Communication's Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA),
which already mandates surveillance backdoors in U.S. telephone
networks. The FCC issued a notice on the proposal, and opened the
question to public comments.
'Criminals have the ability to act on a network in microseconds.'
-- VeriSign
Federal law already compels ISPs to cooperate with law enforcement in
court-approved surveillance of customers. But as police rely more on
Internet snooping -- with tools like the FBI's "Carnivore" DCS-1000
packet sniffer -- they've begun to crave the speed and ease-of-use of
the wiretapping infrastructure that CALEA grafted onto the modern
telephone network, described in a filing by the New York state
Attorney General's office this way: "Within minutes of receipt of the
court order, warrants for the interception of wireless devices can be
implemented by the communications carriers. With just a few computer
key strokes, the connection is made directly between law
enforcement's computerized listening stations and the telephone
service provider's computerized switches."
The Justice Department plan would make Internet taps as easy, though
at great expense to Internet service providers and their customers.
The EFF, ACLU, the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the
Center for Democracy and Technology all filed comments opposing the
plan, and an ACLU letter-drive generated hundreds of mailings from
citizens against what the group called "the New Ashcroft Internet
Snooping Request." All four groups argue that the Justice Department
failed to demonstrate any need for the expansion, that the language
of CALEA makes it clear that it cannot legally be applied to the
Internet, and that innovation would be chilled by the Department's
request that new technologies be pre-programmed for surveillance. "It
threatens to render stillborn a brand new communications industry and
poses a significant risk to the entire Internet," the ACLU wrote.
"The FBI's rulemaking petition would impose a massive bureaucratic
structure upon innovation in communications," wrote the EFF. "Yet the
FBI has offered no evidence that this rulemaking is justified in
terms of its civil-liberties and economic costs." The group also
argues that the surveillance backdoors would make Internet
connections more vulnerable to electronic criminals and unauthorized
eavesdroppers. In another filing, the American Library Association
and 13 college and university groups also opposed the petition,
because "innovation will be threatened, privacy diminished, and
unnecessary costs imposed" on libraries and campuses that provide
broadband connectivity.
Law enforcement support
Not surprisingly, Internet service providers also oppose the plan,
including AT&T, Earthlink, WorldCom, the United Power Line Council,
which consists of companies working on broadband over power line
services, and a group called the ISP CALEA Coalition, which wrote
that the Justice Department's proposal "seeks to overturn the balance
struck by Congress between law enforcement and continued innovation."
Local phone companies proved more agnostic. An earlier FCC ruling
found that DSL service was already covered by CALEA, inasmuch as it
travels over telephone lines. It is "critical," Verizon argued, that
CALEA also be applied to cable modem companies, lest criminals give
up their DSL and flock to the competing services of cable providers
for a little privacy. SBC neither opposed nor supported applying
CALEA to broadband, but urged that the FCC develop a full record to
guide implementers. Bellsouth , took a position more in line with the
ISPs, urging the FCC not expand CALEA without a full rulemaking
process, and arguing that the law simply doesn't permit what the
Justice Department is seeking.
Law enforcement agencies heartily supported expanding CALEA to the
Internet. New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer set out the
state's history of successful organized crime prosecutions based on
telephone wiretaps, and said the FCC "should assure that as new
services are developed, carriers and manufacturers will deploy
eavesdropping capability and that it will punish those who do not."
(Spitzer also took the opportunity to complain about the high fees
wireless companies bill the state to perform cell phone taps.) The
Texas Department of Public Safety supported the petition, as did the
International Association of Chiefs of Poilce, the National Sheriffs'
Association, and the Los Angeles County Regional Criminal Information
Clearinghouse, which operates an electronic surveillance center used
by various local law enforcement agencies in Los Angeles, including
the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD).
The Clearinghouse filing argues that the local police don't have the
FBI's resources to develop their own eavesdropping solutions, and
that without the broadband backdoors sought by the Justice
Department, they've "been thwarted" in their efforts to surveil
Internet users. To emphasis the importance of electronic surveillance
in policing the City of Angels, the Clearinghouse attached a three-
page list of wiretapping successes, including several murder
convictions supposedly made possible by intercepted phone calls.
Los Angeles hasn't always been so open with its wiretapping. In 1998,
the LAPD admitted to concealing the use of court authorized wiretaps
from defense lawyers in 58 different criminal cases over five years,
by treating information gathered from the taps as tips from
confidential informants--a ruse that prevented defendants in the
resulting arrests from challenging the legality of the surveillance.
The skullduggery came to light when a public defender noticed a
discrepancy in wiretap statistics; a Superior Court judge later
ordered an end to the practice and full disclosure of the secret
wiretaps.
Finally, the proposal won the support of Massachusetts-based Top
Layer Networks, which describes itself as "a leading provider of IP
Interception appliances" and found the government's argument "very
logical and completely justified," and VeriSign, which offers its
NetDiscovery surveillance services to telecom companies that prefer
to outsource their FBI wiretaps. VeriSign argued that tapping the
Internet is good for the nation. "Criminals have the ability to act
on a network in microseconds, while law enforcement is encumbered
today with solutions that require weeks to institute judicially
ordered capabilities," reads the filing. The company helpfully
attached a press release about it's recent deal to provide
NetDiscovery services to cable company Cox Communications for an
undisclosed amount.
The FCC is accepting reply comments on the petition until April 27th.
---
* Origin: [adminz] tech, security, support (192.168.0.2)
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