Declan McCullagh
Mon, 01 Jul 2002 11:32:39 -0700
-- Date: Thu, 27 Jun 2002 17:55:03 -0400 From: James Plummer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: NCP: Privacy Villain of the Week: CALEA wiretap tax Privacy Villain of the Week: CALEA wiretap tax Consumers looking forward to lower phone bills or the next generation in whizbang wireless technology <http://www.webdevelopersjournal.com/articles/billion_wap.html> may have to wait a bit longer. First they have to pay for the privilege of having holes deliberately torn out of their phone security. This Sunday, June 30 is the deadline dictated by the courts and the Federal Communications Commission for telecommunications companies to fall into full compliance <http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-02-108A1.pdf> with the 1994 Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Access Act (CALEA)<http://www.askcalea.com/about/pl103414.htm> . Compliance in this instance means the installation of an infrastructure giving the FBI the access, at the flip of a switch, to "call content" (i.e., conversations) and "call data" (i.e., who dialed what when) at the flip of the switch. This mandated infrastructure obviates the need for the cumbersome process of going to a judge, applying for a search warrant and installing a tap before listening in. Now, those rather quaint procedures are still on the books in some form or another -- it's just that the infrastructure is now such that the formal niceties of a legal permission slip aren't strictly necessary to listen in on phone calls on the qt. The ready-to-tap system leaves consumer phone calls -- including the Social Security and bank account numbers entered via touch-tone -- much more vulnerable to other parties with the necessary technical know-how. <http://lists.jammed.com/politech/2001/12/0066.html> The potential for identity fraud and outright theft is thus increased. Now, of course, all of this doesn't come cheap. One small telephone/Internet provider in Kansas told PCWorld, "We were looking at getting into video, providing movies, cable, and entertainment content," but the costs of the CALEA compliance have pushed that back one or two years. <http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,101837,tk,dn061102X,00.asp> Costs of compliance have been quoted as anywhere from $15,000 to $75,000 per switch. VeriSign, which is looking to provide CALEA services to telecom providers estimates that in addition to the upgrade costs, maintenance of CALEA systems will run about "at a minimum $150,000 annually." <http://www.verisign.com/corporate/news/2002/pr_20020603a.html> And of course these higher costs will restrict supply and raise prices above what they otherwise would have been. But it's all for a good cause -- the easy listening pleasure of any number of Privacy Villains of the Week. The Privacy Villain of the Week and Privacy Hero of the Month are projects of the National Consumer Coalition's Privacy Group. Privacy Villain audio features are now available from FCF News on Demand. <http://www.fcfnews.com/> For more information on the NCC Privacy Group, see www.nccprivacy.org or contact James Plummer at 202-467-5809 or [EMAIL PROTECTED] . ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Like Politech? Make a donation here: http://www.politechbot.com/donate/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------