Perhaps they will prohibit talking on VHF without a monitor present
either or paying a tax.




FCC approves Net-wiretapping taxes
By Declan McCullagh and Anne Broache
Staff Writer, CNET News.com

Published: May 3, 2006, 10:53 AM PDT
Last modified: May 3, 2006, 1:11 PM PDT

update WASHINGTON--Broadband providers and Internet phone companies
will have to pick up the tab for the cost of building in mandatory
wiretap access for police surveillance, federal regulators ruled
Wednesday.

The Federal Communications Commission voted unanimously to levy what
likely will amount to wiretapping taxes on companies, municipalities
and universities, saying it would create an incentive for them to keep
costs down and that it was necessary to fight the war on terror.
Universities have estimated their cost to be about $7 billion.

"The first obligation is...the safety of the people," said FCC
Commissioner Michael Copps, a Democrat. "This commission supports
efforts to protect the public safety and homeland security of the
United States and its people."

Federal police agencies have spent years lobbying for mandatory
backdoors for easy surveillance, saying "criminals, terrorists and
spies" could cloak their Internet communications with impunity unless
centralized wiretapping hubs become mandatory. Last year, the FCC set
a deadline of May 14, 2007, for compliance. But universities,
libraries and some technology companies have filed suit against the
agency, and arguments before a federal court are scheduled for Friday.
"We're going to have a lot of fights over cost reimbursement," Al
Gidari, a partner at the law firm of Perkins Coie, who is co-counsel
in the lawsuit, said in an interview after the vote. "It continues the
lunacy of their prior order and confirms they've learned nothing from
what's been filed" in the lawsuit, he said.

The original 1994 law, called the Communications Assistance for Law
Enforcement Act, or CALEA, authorized $500 million to pay
telecommunications carriers for the cost of upgrading their networks
to facilitate wiretapping. Some broadband and voice over Internet
Protocol (VoIP) providers had hoped that they'd be reimbursed as well.
Jonathan Askin, general counsel of Pulver.com, likened Wednesday's
vote to earlier FCC rules extending 911 regulations to VoIP. "It
essentially imposed a mandate on the industry without giving the
industry the necessary support to abide by the rules--and the same
thing seems to be happening here," Askin said.

Even without the CALEA regulations, police have the legal authority to
conduct Internet wiretaps--that's precisely what the FBI's Carnivore
system was designed to do. Still, the FBI has argued, the need for
"standardized broadband intercept capabilities is especially urgent in
light of today's heightened threats to homeland security and the
ongoing tendency of criminals to use the most clandestine modes of
communication."

The American Council on Education, which represents 1,800 colleges and
universities, estimates that the costs of CALEA compliance could total
roughly $7 billion for the entire higher-education community, or a
tuition hike of $450 for every student in the nation. Documents filed
in the lawsuit challenging the FCC's rules put the cost at hundreds of
dollars per student.

But during Wednesday's vote, commissioners dismissed those concerns as
unfounded. "I am not persuaded merely by largely speculative
allegations that the financial burden on the higher-education
community could total billions of dollars," said FCC Commissioner
Deborah Taylor Tate, a Republican.

The FCC's initial ruling last fall had left open the question of
whether broadband and VoIP providers would be reimbursed for rewiring
their networks and upgrading equipment to comply with CALEA.

Another open question is what portion of a university's or library's
network must be rendered wiretap-friendly. One possibility is that
only the pipe (or pipes) connecting a school with the rest of the
Internet must be made CALEA-compliant. Another is that the entire
network would be covered.

The FCC adopted its second order on Wednesday but released only a
two-page summary, which didn't offer much clarity. In its initial
ruling last year, the FCC said only that it had reached "no
conclusions" about exactly what universities and libraries would have
to do, prompting a flurry of comments filed with the agency and the
federal lawsuit. (Plaintiffs in the lawsuit include Sun Microsystems,
the American Civil Liberties Union, the Center for Democracy and
Technology, the American Library Association, the American Council on
Education and VoIP firm Pulver.com.)

Commissioner Copps acknowledged that there is "still some clarity to
be provided" for library and university network operators, but he
suggested that additional clarity would not be forthcoming from the
FCC. Instead, "all those agencies and offices of government who are
involved in CALEA implementation should be working together to provide
clarity there to avoid confusion and possibly expenses for these
institutions," Copps said.

At the Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference here Wednesday, John
Morris of the Center for Democracy and Technology said libraries and
universities are still left with more questions than answers.

"There's some serious uncertainty about how it will really play out
for universities," Morris said. Even if the FCC technically calls for
Internet interception at the edge of a campus network, that likely
won't be enough to satisfy law enforcement demands for all of an
individual student's network traffic, including on-campus activities,
he added.

Injecting additional uncertainty is whether the FCC's action is legal.
It represents what critics call an unreasonable extension of
CALEA--which was designed to address telephone features such as
three-way calling and call waiting--to the Internet.

A House of Representatives committee report (click here for PDF)
prepared in October 1994 emphatically says CALEA's requirements "do
not apply to information services such as electronic-mail services; or
online services such as CompuServe, Prodigy, America Online or Mead
Data (Central); or to Internet service providers."

When Congress was debating CALEA, then-FBI Director Louis Freeh
reassured nervous senators that the law would be limited to telephone
calls. "So what we are looking for is strictly telephone--what is said
over a telephone?" Sen. Larry Pressler, R-S.D., asked during one
hearing.

Freeh replied: "That is the way I understand it. Yes, sir."

Two of the four FCC commissioners who voted for the initial CALEA
ruling last fall acknowledged that the federal government was on shaky
legal ground. The FCC's regulation is based on arguing that the law's
definition of "telecommunications carrier" applies to broadband and
VoIP providers.

Then-FCC Commissioner Kathleen Abernathy, a Republican, said, "Because
litigation is as inevitable as death and taxes, and because some might
not read the statute to permit the extension of CALEA to the broadband
Internet access and VoIP services at issue here, I have stated my
concern that an approach like the one we adopt today is not without
legal risk."

The FCC is no stranger to having its decisions rejected by a federal
appeals court that can be hostile to what it views as regulatory
overreaching. Last May, for instance, the FCC's "broadcast flag" was
unceremoniously tossed out by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C.
Circuit.

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