From: <wt.70317@linknet.uunet.uu.net>
Subject: FBI Wants to Tap Phone Firms to Eavesdrop (Reprint)
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: University of Missouri
Distribution: na
Date: Mon, 13 Apr 1992 20:50:05 GMT

     "FBI Wants to Tap Phone Firms for New Eavesdropping Devices"
        Source: Chicago Tribune, April 12, 1992 (Sect. 7: 9b)

NEW YORK (Reuters)--The FBI wants the nations telephone companies to
stop rolling out advanced digital phone systems that stymie the
agency's practice of listening in on criminal conversations.

At stake is the future of the wiretap, one of the bureau's most
effective investigative tools, which is getting harder to engineer as
phone systems grow more complex.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation says modern telephone networks,
which rely on digital and fiber-optic systems, are making it difficult
to eavesdrop on phone calls in criminal investigations.

So the bureau has drafted legislation that would require phone
companies to stop deploying digital technology until they can come up
with a way for the bureau to preserve the wiretap.

For regional and long-distance phone companies that have spent
billions of dollars to upgrade systems and galvanize the U.S. lead in
telecommunications, the FBI proposals are late at best and
anti-competitive at worst.

"It is late...this stuff is already out there," said Ken Pitt, a chief
spokesman for Bell Atlantic Corp., one of seven regional telephone
companies, known as the Baby Bells, formed by the breakup of American
Telephone & Telegraph Co.

AT&T and the Baby Bells, as represented by the U.S. Telephone
Association, oppose the draft bill as written.

Researcher Douglas Conn, associate director of Columbia University's
Institute for Tele-Information, said the dispute could threaten the
U.S. position in global communications.

"It is a very, very touch and difficult issue. On the one side is the
very real concern of the FBI. On the other are the telephone companies
and organizations that support using an advanced telecommunications
network to compete internationally," Conn said.

But the FBI is pressing forward.

FBI Director William Sessions recently wrote a column for the New York
Times about the potential threat to the effectiveness of law
enforcement.

"Wiretapping is one of the most effective means of combating drug
trafficking, organized crime, kidnaping and corruption in government,"
Sessions wrote in the column, which was published last month.

"The Federal Bureau of Investigation does not want the new digital
technology that is spreading across America to impair this crucial
law-enforcement technique."

The FBI says it uses telephone wiretaps in just 1 percent of its
investigations and only with a court warrant.  But those cases tend to
be major  ones involving organized crime and drug traffickers.

By law, telephone companies are required to assist the FBI in
court-approved wiretapping.

But company officials say they are baffled that the FBI, long known for
inventing ingenious investigative tools, expects them to develop the
wiretap technology.

The Federal Communications Commission, which regulates
telecommunications, is also worried about the proposed legislation.

"Our most overriding concern is the potential negative impact this
could have on the development of the telecommunications
infrastructure," said James Spurlock, a top FCC official.

"There are real public policy questions here."

FCC Chairman Alfred Sikes wants U.S. phone companies to speed up their
use of digital systems and fiber optics to compete with technologies
surfacing in Japan, France and Germany.

Regional phone companies are on the threshold of deploying digital
equipment in the local service loops that take in residential
customers, the same leg of the service that the FBI uses in
wiretapping.

But with the coming installation of Integrated Services Digital
Network systems into homes and residences, conventional wiretapping
devices may produce little more than an incomprehensible jumble of
sound.

James Kallstrom, chief of the FBI's engineering and technical services
division, says the bureau proposal would mean only one more
requirement among hundreds that phone companies write into their
systems.

"We are looking for them to take in our requirements as they take in
hundreds of other requirements when they design these things," he
said.

"The have hundreds of internal design requirements to account for
billing and routing and new services. This would be another."

Kallstrom also disputed the argument that the FBI's proposals would
impede technological development or impose big costs, saying changes
could be designed into software or manufactured into switches.

Officials from BellSouth Corp., Bell Atlantic, Nynex Corp., among
other Baby Bells, as well as telecommunications companies American
Telephone & Telegraph Co. and GTE Corp., have met with FBI technicians
at an FBI training center to hammer out the problem.

"These meetings are better refining the issue" and easing some of the
adversity, said BellSouth spokesman Bill McCloskey. But the session
resolved little.

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