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FCC Demands Universities Comply With Wiretap Law
tabdelgawad writes "The New York Times reports that the FCC is requiring universities to upgrade their online systems to comply with the 1994 wiretap law, which would make it easier for law enforcement to monitor communications online. The universities are not objecting on civil rights grounds (the law requires a court order before monitoring), but on cost grounds (upgrades may cost $7 billion). But with the technology infrastructure in place, what happens if congress decides to relax court order requirements in the future 'in their fight against criminals, terrorists and spies?'"
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Colleges Protest Call to Upgrade Online Systems
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By SAM DILLON and STEPHEN LABATON
Published: October 23, 2005
The federal government, vastly extending the reach of an 11-year-old law, is requiring hundreds of universities, online communications companies and cities to overhaul their Internet computer networks to make it easier for law enforcement authorities to monitor e-mail and other online communications.
Related Site: Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (fcc.gov)
The action, which the government says is intended to help catch terrorists and other criminals, has unleashed protests and the threat of lawsuits from universities, which argue that it will cost them at least $7 billion while doing little to apprehend lawbreakers. Because the government would have to win court orders before undertaking surveillance, the universities are not raising civil liberties issues.
The order, issued by the Federal Communications Commission in August and first published in the Federal Register last week, extends the provisions of a 1994 wiretap law not only to universities, but also to libraries, airports providing wireless service and commercial Internet access providers.
It also applies to municipalities that provide Internet access to residents, be they rural towns or cities like Philadelphia and San Francisco, which have plans to build their own Net access networks.
So far, however, universities have been most vocal in their opposition.
The 1994 law, the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, requires telephone carriers to engineer their switching systems at their own cost so that federal agents can obtain easy surveillance access.
Recognizing the growth of Internet-based telephone and other communications, the order requires that organizations like universities providing Internet access also comply with the law by spring 2007.
The Justice Department requested the order last year, saying that new technologies like telephone service over the Internet were endangering law enforcement's ability to conduct wiretaps "in their fight against criminals, terrorists and spies."
Justice Department officials, who declined to comment for this article, said in their written comments filed with the Federal Communications Commission that the new requirements were necessary to keep the 1994 law "viable in the face of the monumental shift of the telecommunications industry" and to enable law enforcement to "accomplish its mission in the face of rapidly advancing technology."
The F.C.C. says it is considering whether to exempt educational institutions from some of the law's provisions, but it has not granted an extension for compliance.
Lawyers for the American Council on Education, the nation's largest association of universities and colleges, are preparing to appeal the order before the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, Terry W. Hartle, a senior vice president of the council, said Friday.
The Center for Democracy and Technology, a nonprofit civil liberties group, has enlisted plaintiffs for a separate legal challenge, focusing on objections to government control over how organizations, including hundreds of private technology companies, design Internet systems, James X. Dempsey, the center's executive director, said Friday.
The universities do not question the government's right to use wiretaps to monitor terrorism or criminal suspects on college campuses, Mr. Hartle said, only the order's rapid timetable for compliance and extraordinary cost.
Technology experts retained by the schools estimated that it could cost universities at least $7 billion just to buy the Internet switches and routers necessary for compliance. That figure does not include installation or the costs of hiring and training staff to oversee the sophis
The statistics are easy to find. However that won't help you sleep better. In 2004 there were aboyt 3500 wiretap requests by law enforcement agencies. NONE were denied.
What is surprising to me is the relatively small number. On the other hand it seems pretty unlikely that Congress will be under any pressure to pass a law granting wiretap authority without court approval since the courts never deny a wiretap application.
Of course you are free to ask to supress such evidence in the case you are brought to trial - that supression does happen.
I waited three years for the C++ classes to become available at the local community college since the school didn't have the money to renew the Microsoft site license. (Java and Linux was taught during the meantime; not bad but job market for C++ programmers is a tad bit larger.) Now the Feds want the schools to upgrade the network infrastructure to find the next Neo in the Matrix. Oh, my gosh. I wonder which budget that little hardware upgrade is going to come from. Guess I'll be learning more Java at Starbucks when I graduate.
In summary, the Government can "request" your password/encryption key at any time. Failure to hand it over, or even to disclose to anyone that you have been "asked" is a criminal offence punishable by jailtime. Oh, and a bunch of other goodies which totally make a mockery of our justice system and civil rights.
Backup not found: (A)bort (R)etry (P)anic
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US Universities have been especially anti-American since the '60s.
Of course, they don't mind that the government helps to pay their salaries.
Before the Supreme Court decided Warden v. Hayden, 387 U.S. 294, 309 (1967), law enforcement officers could not obtain search warrants to search for and seize "mere evidence" of crime. Warrants were permitted only to seize contraband, instrumentalities, or fruits of crime. See Boyd v. United States, 116 U.S. 616 (1886).
She had had her first love-affair when she was sixteen, with a Party member of sixty who later committed suicide to avoid arrest. 'And a good job too,' said Julia, 'otherwise they'd have had my name out of him when he confessed.' Since then there had been various others. Life as she saw it was quite simple. You wanted a good time; 'they', meaning the Party, wanted to stop you having it; you broke the rules as best you couId. She seemed to think it just as natural that 'they' should want to rob you of your pleasures as that you should want to avoid being caught. She hated the Party, and said so in the crudest words, but she made no general criticism of it. Except where it touched upon her own life she had no interest in Party doctrine. He noticed that she never used Newspeak words except the ones that had passed into everyday use. She had never heard of the Brotherhood, and refused to believe in its existence. Any kind of organized revolt against the Party, which was bound to be a failure, struck her as stupid. The clever thing was to break the rules and stay alive all the same. He wondered vaguely how many others like her there might be in the younger generation people who had grown up in the world of the Revolution, knowing nothing else, accepting the Party as something unalterable, like the sky, not rebelling against its authority but simply evading it, as a rabbit dodges a dog. -- George Orwell "1984"
Scientific analysis http://instapundit.com/archives/011803.php does not support your statement. According to the CDC, there is "insufficient evidence" that bans, waiting periods and other gun control laws reduce crime rates.
When it comes to guns the UK population in general has a completely different attitude to than the US. The ban on firearms has practicly the complete support of politicians and the public; there is no gun lobby and it's a non-issue politicly. It could be seen as a reduction in civil rights if people in the UK wanted to own firearms but weren't allowed to but, as things stand, it's universally regarded as a good law. My local shop sells some gun magazines but, tellingly, they store them on the top shelf with the pornography.
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As someone who's job will be to execute these damn pronouncements, I have a lot of work to do to catch up with the letter of the law. Obviously, if someone were to securely encrypt their data/communications, CALEA won't unlock it. I need to learn what CALEA require me to guarantee access to, exactly. I don't control the lions share of communications on our network. E.G. - we don't control instant messaging; people use AIM, etc.
One of the hot topics in college/university settings is what next generation telephony will look like. I imagine CALEA might put limits on our options. For example, should a Skype-like service offer us the ability to offer branded service, that might be a very attractive option. However, should such a service obviate our ability to provide the type of data required by CALEA, it might not be an option.
We may see an erosion of confidence in college/university IT. If people know we are providing federal officers always-on access to their communications, they may very well not use our services. I'm not sure that's all bad. In the end, I wonder if CALEA may have the opposite of it's intended effect. The only reason we can provide logs, etc., is that services such as email and so forth require a central infrastructure. I predict the long term consequence will be a more rapid adoption of peer based communication protocols with no centrally managed infrastructure at all. Such an infrastructure will be almost impervious to even traditional means of obtaining wiretap privileges, as there will be no place to tap into, no logs, nothing.