Telcos, surveillance and the FCC

There is more about this on SlashDot http://slashdot.org/articles/02/04/1....shtml?tid=158
From http://biz.yahoo.com/rb/020411/telec...illance_1.html
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WASHINGTON, April 11 (Reuters) - U.S. telephone companies, including mobile phone carriers, will have to provide law enforcement officials with some new surveillance capabilities by June 30, the Federal Communications Commission said on Thursday.

Carriers will have to provide upon request from law enforcement agencies the numbers dialed after a call is connected, numbers and associated signals of various parties who join a conference call or drop from one; call forwarding and call waiting signals; and signals related to obtaining messages left for a caller.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia vacated those so- called punch-list requirements in 2000 because it said the FCC failed to address adequately privacy and cost concerns raised by carriers and privacy advocates.

The FCC issued a 57-page order upholding the four challenged capabilities and found that their implementation was cost-effective and would minimize costs on residential customers.

``We find it reasonable to require wireline, cellular, and broadband PCS carriers to implement all punch list capabilities by June 30,'' the FCC said in an order unanimously adopted on April 5 and released Thursday.

``The record indicates that much of the software required to implement the punch list items has already been developed which should significantly speed implementation,'' the agency said.

Two other punch list items that carriers will also have to comply with include providing the FBI and other law enforcement agencies with timing information about calls as well as the content of conference calls by the target of an investigation.

Carriers could again challenge the requirements in court or appeal to the FCC for more time to come into compliance.

The trade group for the wireless industry said it was disappointed with the order because it did not clear up whether certain wireless data services like Internet browsing and short-messaging services are subject to surveillance requirements.

``The Commission said it would address such requirements in this order, but by avoiding the issue it leaves the industry guessing about future standards for surveillance,'' Tom Wheeler, head of the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association, said in a statement.
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Great, not only invasion of privacy, but yet another tax added to your phone bill.

Interesting article

thanks for that info gstudios!

in the last report that i saw, 9x% (somewhere between 92 - 97%, id have to look it up) of the people whose calls were monitered, turned out to be innocent of any crime. this report came from the UK, but it sounds like it would be typical anywhere.

And given the fact that the fcc is calling for the recording of all key presses after a conection is made.

this would mean that if you knew or worked with anyone the fbi/whoever was investigating, there could be a pretty good chance that the next time you called your bank to check your balance, or used any phone service that required a password, your pin # would be recorded.

this would be done without them ever needing to talk to a judge. Completely at their own discretion. This is an outrage.

Just the fact that they think their ability to investigate has a higher precedence than my privacy illustrates the need for a smaller, more decentralized government. By their nature all organizations are corrupt and tend to care more about the needs of the organization than the reasons they were formed. People should be able to control the government, not the other way around.

PIN #s being recorded sure is an outrage. Someone needs to work on some type of way to scramble/encrpyt tones for your vital information entered via a touchtone phone. Touchtones can be decoded by any DTMF decoder, which can be used to find PIN#s, credit card numbers, anything in a pre-recorded, then digitized, phone conversation.

i have to disagree with you PastyPyro, we shouldn't have to scramble anything. if each case had to be justified before a judge as it has been done with land lines, it wouldn't be a problem.

this scheme they've cooked up, is beyond a shadow of a doubt, THE most un-american thing ever done.