Does anyone have some up-to-date information on CALEA? https://askcalea.fbi.gov/ has a fair amount of broken links. The servicer provider registration is broken. The web-site has not been updated. Searches on FBI.gov and the FCC site just point back to askcalea.
Are any of you still seeing CALEA requests on the voice or the data sides?
What is the community hearing about CALEA?
Justin Wilson
j2sw@mtin.net
Crickets?
I haven't had a request in ages...back then all of the links worked.
The OP is also asking someone to register a throwaway email, subscribe, and
respond "yes" so that the owner can't be tracked to their employer. That's
kind of a steep ask for something that's almost moot.
I haven't had a request in ages...back then all of the links worked.
Hrm?
Perhaps the silence is an indication no one is doing CALEA or knows anything about it?
Personally, I can't say I've heard anything about CALEA, seen people trying to sell CALEA appliances, or received a CALEA request in maybe 8 years?
This is a large list that includes many Tier 1 network operators,
government agencies, and Fortune 500 network operators.
The silence should be telling.
no one gets calea requests because prism gets all requests?
The first rule of prism is...
*silence*
AFAIK being able to do a lawful intercept on a specific, named,
individual's service has been a requirement for providers since 2007. I
have never heard of a provider, big or small, being called out for being
unable to provide this service when requested. I would be surprised if a
national broadband ISP with millions of subs did not have this ability and
did not perform intercepts routinely. I would be surprised if a small town
providing it's own Internet access or small WISP serving a few hundred
customers went through the trouble and expense of being able to provide
this service.
The mediation server needed to "mediate" between your customer aggregation
box and the LEA is not inexpensive. I believe there was talk about
"trusted third parties" providing mediation-as-a-service but I do not know
if any such entities exist. The logistics of running a mediation server in
the cloud and being able to signal from the cloud to the aggregation box to
begin a mediation and ensuring that the data exported from the ISP to the
cloud to the LEA remained private would seem to be significant but not
insurmountable.
In a message written on Tue, May 10, 2016 at 03:00:59PM -0500, Josh Reynolds wrote:
This is a large list that includes many Tier 1 network operators,
government agencies, and Fortune 500 network operators.The silence should be telling.
NANOG has a strong self-selection for people who run core routing
devices and do things like BGP and peering negotiations with other
providers.
By contrast, CALEA requirements are generally all met by features
deployed at the customer-edge. These groups are often a separate
silo from the backbone folks at the largest providers.
This is likely the wrong list for asking such questions, and the few
who do answer is likely to be smaller providers where people wear
multiple hats.
AFAIK being able to do a lawful intercept on a specific, named,
individual's service has been a requirement for providers since 2007.
It's been required for longer than that. The telco I worked for over a decade ago didn't build the infrastructure until the FCC said they were going to stop funding upgrades. That really got 'em movin'. (suddenly "data services" people -- i.e. ME -- weren't redheaded stepchildren.)
have never heard of a provider, big or small, being called out for being
unable to provide this service when requested.
Where existing infrastructure is not already in place (read: T1/BRI/etc.), the telco can take up to 60 days to get that setup. I know more than one telco that used that grace period to actually setup CALEA in the first place.
did not perform intercepts routinely.
The historic published figures (i've not looked in years) suggest CALEA requests are statistically rare. The NC based telco I worked for had never received an order in the then ~40yr life of the company.
The mediation server needed to "mediate" between your customer aggregation box and the LEA is not inexpensive.
And also is not the telco's problem. Mediation is done by the LEA or 3rd party under contract to any number of agencies. For example, a telco tap order would mirror the control and voice traffic of a POTS line (T1/PRI channel, etc.) into a BRI or specific T1 channel. (dialup was later added, but wasn't required in my era, so we didn't support it.) We used to test that by tapping a tech's phone. Not having any mediation software, all I could do is "yeap, it's sending data" and listen to the voice channels on a t-berd.
--Ricky
My comments were strictly limited to my understanding of CALEA as it
applied to ISPs, not telcos. A request for a lawful intercept can entail
mirroring a real time stream of all data sent to/from a customer's Internet
connection (cable modem/DSL/dedicated Ethernet) to a LEA. AFAIK this
requires mediation before being sent to the LEA and it is the mediation
server itself that initiates the intercept when so configured by the ISP.
Perhaps some LEAs have undertaken the mediation function so as to
facilitate these intercepts where the neither the ISP nor a third party can
do so. If that were the case then very little would be needed on the part
of the ISP in order to comply with a request for lawful intercept. I can
say with certainty that these types of requests are being made of broadband
ISPs though I agree that they are very rare.
I can say via firsthand knowledge that CALEA requests are definitely
happening and are not even that rare, proportional to a reasonably sized
subscriber-base. It would be unlawful for me to comment specifically on
any actual CALEA requests, however. But if you have general questions
about my observations, feel free to reach out directly.
-MJ
How many requests per 1k or 10k customers? Is primarily residential a safe
assumption?
Josh Luthman
Office: 937-552-2340
Direct: 937-552-2343
1100 Wayne St
Suite 1337
Troy, OH 45373
CALEA isn't a type of request, it's a law that enabled par function
access for LEO's e.g. "the ladder" pin register, trap+trace, DTMF
translation, three-way/off hook ops and the call content (not
necessarily in that order).
You can see the non national security activity here:
Misfire. Sorry, early in the AM. The URL I intended to send is here:
http://www.uscourts.gov/statistics-reports/wiretap-report-2014
Best,
-M<
"Encryption
The number of state wiretaps in which encryption was encountered decreased
from 41 in 2013 to 22 in 2014. In two of these wiretaps, officials were
unable to decipher the plain text of the messages. Three federal wiretaps
were reported as being encrypted in 2014, of which two could not be
decrypted. Encryption was also reported for five federal wiretaps that were
conducted during previous years, but reported to the AO for the first time
in 2014. Officials were able to decipher the plain text of the
communications in four of the five intercepts."
that's certainly interesting...