Two software vendors have made their IP wiretapping tools for
carriers and law-enforcement agencies work together.
In August 2004, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission ruled
that interconnected VoIP service providers will have to allow law
enforcement wiretapping under Communications Assistance for Law
Enforcement Act (CALEA) by May 14, 2007. A federal court upheld
that ruling on Friday.
Narus Inc.'s NarusInsight Intercept Suite for carriers has been
fully tested for interoperability with Pen-Link Ltd.'s Lincoln 2
data collection and reporting software for law enforcement, the
companies will announce Tuesday.
The transition on carrier networks from circuit-switched phone
calls to IP packet data services has turned the world of
wiretapping upside down. With new laws requiring carriers to hand
over information about subscribers' e-mail and Web surfing,
carriers and legal agencies need new tools that work with each
other.
A set of rules from ETSI (the European Telecommunications
Standards Institute) that cover interception and analysis of e-mail
and other IP communications is now being phased in across Europe
and adopted in some Asian countries, according to Steve Bannerman,
vice president of Marketing at Narus. ETSI doesn't yet have a law
on VOIP wiretapping, he said.
The software a carrier uses to intercept communications has to
match up with the tools used by the law-enforcement agency that
wants to collect and interpret the data, Bannerman said.
The Narus and Pen-Link products are the first to comply with
both the ETSI rules and the VOIP CALEA regulations as well as U.S.
laws on collecting e-mail and Web data, the companies claim.
Specifically, they fully comply with the CALEA T1.678 standard and
the ETSI TS 102 232/233/234 standards.
The software is intended for probes, with warrants, of specific
users' traffic during specific periods, Bannerman said.
While service providers and law enforcement work out how to
implement the new breed of lawful intercept, enterprises and other
users are just beginning to face the questions it raises, according
to Stacey Quandt, an analyst at Aberdeen Group, in Boston.
"There is still a cloud of uncertainty as to what information is
being accessed and how it is being used by government agencies,"
Quandt said.
icon.
