In 1994, Congress passed the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA). The law was designed to make it easier for law enforcement and criminal investigation agencies to wiretap telephone conversations. While the entire legislation was bitterly controversial, one of the most contentious provisions of CALEA was the demand for the capability to ascertain specific information about telephone calls without a warrant. Since then, the telecommunications industry, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and civil liberties advocacy groups have been squabbling about how to bring the telecommunications networks into compliance with the law. In mid-April, the FCC ordered the telecommunications companies to comply with CALEA by the end of June.
CALEA requires telecommunications carriers to provide law enforcement and investigation agencies with not only wiretapping capabilities but also “call-identifying information” that contains telephone numbers dialed as well as the telephone numbers of incoming calls. In order to obtain a full wiretap, law enforcement has to convince a judge that there is probable cause that the target of the surveillance has committed a crime. In order to obtain “call-identifying information,” a police officer only has to certify that the surveillance is “relevant to an ongoing criminal investigation.”
Of course, there is disagreement over what “call-identifying information” covers. The privacy groups say it’s congressional verbiage for “phone numbers” while the FBI wants it to include additional information—referred to as “dialed-digit extraction”—including all the numbers dialed during a phone call.
Think about this for a minute. Using “dialed-digit extraction,” law enforcement would be able to obtain your voicemail and telebanking PINs without a warrant. And that’s just for starters. What else you do with the buttons on your telephone?
