[Fwd: [IP] Feds: VoIP a potential haven for terrorists]

Sun Jun 20 00:38:49 UTC 2004

On Sat, 19 Jun 2004, Hannigan, Martin wrote:
> Sean, the capacity requirements aren't as straightforward as you
> are interpreting them.

You are absolutely correct, they are not that straightforward.  You
should consult a telecommunications attorney with expertise in this area
for legal advice.

> If you are a CLEC and you cover a full five state
> area in the Northeast, you probably are subject to a county aggregate
> of a capacity requirement of 1500.

No.  The FBI is very clear, if you are a CLEC and cover a full five state
area in the Northeast, you are subject to the CUMULATIVE capacity require
for every county in those five states.

See the www.askcalea.com web site for full details.

> You would then look at your
> historicals, refer to the Federal Register for the actual maximum,
> and adjust your capacity as required to meet your own historicals
> and averages -- that also should take into consideration other
> RBOCs/CLECs operating in the same five state region as the orders
> will more than likely be broken out by access line % per carrier
> unless a single carrier dominates in a traditionally active area.

Although this was suggested by commentators, the FBI explicitely rejected
that.  The theory was the Mafia would then buy phone service from some
smaller carrier without enough capacity to monitor all their calls.

   Individual carriers must provide sufficient capacity so that law
   enforcement has the ability to simultaneously conduct any number of
   call content interceptions, pen registers, and trap and trace devices,
   not to exceed the estimated actual and maximum requirements (which are
   based on historical interception activity) at any location within a
   county.
	Appendix A of the Final Notice of Capacity (63 Fed Reg 12217,
	12238)

However, there is an exception, no single switch is required to support
more than 386 simultaneous pen registers and trap and trace devices or
75 simultaneous call content interceptions.  What is a "switch?"

http://www.askcalea.com/docs/capsecg.pdf

Individual carriers can take the legal gamble and use other network
deployment strtegies, such as making assumptions of how many pen
registers, trap and trace and intercepts will occur on their network
versus a competitors network.  Assume 95% of the court orders will go
to your competitors, so you only need to provide 5% of the capacity
in the county. But you can't escape the penalties by depending on your
competitor's capacity.

   The obligation to satisfy the capacity requirements in a
   cost-effective andreasonable manner is the responsibility
   of all carriers that operate within a given geographic area.

How often do you see all the competitors in an industry sit down in a
room and decide how they will divide up the costs and establish pricing?

> It's complicated, but noone is subject to a straight 1200+ capacity
> required. There were 1,442 NON FISA oral and electronic intercepts in
> the entire United States last year.[2]

Actually, they are expected to provide far more than that.  As you know,
the Wiretap report does not include pen registers.  There is no public
source for the number of pen registers in the US, but some industry
sources estimate it at 70,000 to 75,000 per year.