- WASHINGTON (AP) -- Technology
companies should be required to ensure that law enforcement agencies can
install wiretaps on Internet traffic and new generations of digital communications,
the Justice Department says.
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- The push would effectively expand the scope of the Communications
Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, a 1994 law that requires the telecommunications
industry to build into its products tools that U.S. investigators can use
to eavesdrop on conversations with a court order.
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- Fearful that federal agents can't install wiretaps against
criminals using the latest communications technologies, lawyers for the
Justice Department, FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration said their
proposals "require immediate attention and resolution" by the
Federal Communications Commission.
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- They called wiretaps "an invaluable and necessary
tool for federal, state, and local law enforcement in their fight against
criminals, terrorists, and spies."
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- "The ability of federal, state, and local law enforcement
to carry out critical electronic surveillance is being compromised today,"
they wrote in legal papers filed with the FCC earlier this week. "Communications
among surveillance targets are being lost.... These problems are real,
not hypothetical."
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- The FCC agreed last month to hold proceedings on the
issue to "address the scope of covered services, assign responsibility
for compliance, and identify the wiretap capabilities required."
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- Critics said the government's proposal would have far-reaching
impact on new communications technologies and could be enormously expensive
for companies that need to add wiretap-capabilities to their products,
such as push-to-talk cellular telephones and telephone service over Internet
lines.
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- The Justice Department urged the FCC to declare that
companies must pay for any such improvements themselves, although it said
companies should be permitted to pass those expenses on to their customers.
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- Stewart Baker, a Washington telecommunications lawyer
and former general counsel at the National Security Agency, complained
that the government's proposal applies broadly to high-speed Internet service
and puts limits on the introduction of new technology until it can be made
wiretap-friendly.
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- Baker said the plan "seeks to erect a brand new
and quite extensive regulatory program" that gives the FBI and telephone
regulators a crucial role in the design of future communications technologies.
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- Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited
2004
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- http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-3856719,00.html
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