FBI Fears Phone Advances Will Hamper Wiretapping : Technology: Measure would require industry to ensure that changes will not impede electronic eavesdropping. Consumers may have to foot the bill.
The FBI, contending that rapidly developing telecommunications technology is hampering the vital tool of wiretapping, proposed legislation Friday that would require the industry to ensure that improvements do not interfere with the ability to secretly record conversations.
It also proposed that consumers pick up the cost of changing current wiretapping equipment to keep pace with the new technologies.
If the problem is not solved, “terrorists, violent criminals, kidnapers, drug cartels and other criminal organizations will be able to carry out their illegal activities using the telecommunications system without detection,” FBI Director William S. Sessions said.
But the proposal immediately drew fire from industry officials and civil libertarians who contend that the FBI has failed to prove that its wiretapping ability is endangered. Furthermore, the critics said, the cost of updating wiretapping equipment, should that be necessary, ought to be paid through government funds rather than by telephone users.
Marc Rotenberg, Washington director of Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, said that the FBI proposal is troubling because it suggests that future phone services will have to be designed with wire surveillance in mind.
He called the plan “unacceptable, because we’re trying to build and strengthen a communications infrastructure--not establish a system of surveillance.”
At issue is the rapid move toward digital telephone communications and fiber-optic systems in which thousands of conversations can be carried by filaments roughly the size of a strand of human hair.
William A. Bayse, assistant FBI director for technical services, and other FBI officials contend that the transmission of hundreds and sometimes thousands of digital conversations over a single link prevents current wiretapping technology from isolating conversations for recording as required under the 1968 federal wiretap law.
Re-engineering present wiretapping systems to keep pace with the changes could cost “tens of millions” of dollars and require at least two years of effort, Bayse and other FBI officials estimated.
The proposed legislation would amend the Communications Act of 1934 to require providers of electronic communications services to ensure that advanced technology does not impede “the government’s ability to lawfully intercept communications.”
If the measure is approved, the Federal Communications Commission, after consulting with the attorney general, would issue regulations requiring that telecommunications systems be modified if they interfere with electronic surveillance.
Telephone companies and private branch exchanges, such as intra-company phone services, would have four months to comply after the regulations were issued.
The FCC would be authorized to raise interstate phone rates to pay for the modifications, and the attorney general would be empowered to seek an injunction against service providers who fail to comply. Those willfully violating the FCC regulations would be subject to a civil penalty of $10,000 for each day of violation.
Sessions said the legislation “represents by far the least costly alternative and is the only certain method of addressing the issue.” Other FBI officials said the expense could be passed on to telephone users at a cost of “probably less than 20 cents an average per month.”
But Ken Pitt, a spokesman for Bell Atlantic Corp., questioned the need for the legislation, saying: “We have worked with the FBI continually in court-ordered wiretapping. I’m not aware of any case where we have not been able to accommodate” their needs.
FBI officials maintained, however, that they already have encountered difficulties in recording digitally transmitted conversations, now used by about 10% of the nation’s phones. They declined, however, to give any examples of such difficulties.
