A consortium of civil liberties groups, corporations, libraries, and universities will challenge a Federal Communications Commission ruling that they must make their Internet infrastructures easier to penetrate by the police.', 'Sun Microsystems, the American Library Association, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, among others, will take the FCC decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit. They argue that the FCC is wrongly applying the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) to the Internet.

"CALEA was drafted specifically to regulate phone networks, which are designed to be closed systems . . . " the Electronic Frontier Foundation''s briefing argues. "If CALEA is misapplied to the Internet, the results will be disastrous. The privacy of innocent people is likely to be violated, innovation will certainly be stifled, and the current and future functionality of the Internet will be crippled."

History

Congress passed CALEA in 1994 in response to the changing nature of telephone technology. For over 100 years phone networks ran on analog systems with central switching units that were relatively easy for law enforcement agencies to monitor.

But once telecom companies began using digital signals and decentralized packet switching software, it became harder to anticipate where a telephone conversation would travel over the wires. Wiretapping became a lot more difficult.

CALEA made telephone companies redesign their infrastructures so that the FBI and other agencies could more easily monitor telephone conversations in the new digital environment. In 1998 the FBI asked the FCC to give them even more access by requring cell phone manufacturers to implant technology that revealed the location of callers.

But in March, 2004 the Department of Justice (DOJ), the FBI, and the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) filed a petition complaining that Internet and telecommunications companies resisted compliance with CALEA, claiming that their particular services did not come under the law''s jurisdiction. And so the petitioners asked the FCC "to reaffirm that packet-mode communications services are subject to CALEA and, having done so, to establish rules that formally identify the services and entities that are covered by CALEA, so that both law enforcement and industry are on notice with respect to CALEA obligations and compliance."

On August 5, 2005, the FCC came through for the FBI and DEA. The Commission found that VOiP providers (Internet telephone service) and broadband Internet access providers can easily step in for more traditional telephone services. Therefore, they "must be prepared to accommodate law enforcement wiretaps."

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