The FBI has issued a request for a second round of comments on how to implement the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, a statute passed last year to make it easier for police agencies to tap advanced digital phone lines.
The focus of the new round of comments is whether the FBI's proposal for gathering information from phone companies and other communications firms are unduly time-consuming and expensive.
The FBI says that some 3,497 telecom carriers will each have to spend about 2 hours and 10 minutes to do the preliminary work of identifying systems or services that the FBI might want to target for surveillance under the law.
On the first go-round of commentary, the FBI's information requests received a number of negative reviews from Pacific Telesis, the US Telephone Association, Bell South, and Ameritech, among others. Most complained that the requirements were impossible to evaluate because of a failure to define what capacity the carriers will need, and that they were burdensome in terms of both labor and time requirements. In January, the FBI scaled back its wiretap proposal after telecom companies complained that the original plan would cost them billions of dollars.
Tuesday's request for comment summarizes and attempts to address many of those concerns and gives the public and telecom carriers an additional 30 days to file written reports of their concerns with the federal Office of Management and Budget or the Department of Justice.
The notice again seeks comment on "whether the proposed collection of information is necessary for the proper performance of the functions of the agency," whether the FBI has correctly evaluated the burden its requests places on telecom carriers, enhancing "the quality, utility, and clarity of the information to be collected," and minimizing "the burden of collection of information."
Civil libertarians say the law represents an unprecedented expansion of police ability to listen in on US citizens' conversations. By one published estimate, the FBI seeks a system capable of intercepting 57,000 calls simultaneously. By another estimate, the number of standard phone calls the FBI anticipates intercepting in 2004 will be 74 percent more than those listened in to last year. The rise in cellular interceptions will be vastly greater: 277 percent.
