ALAWON: American Library Association Washington Office Newsline
Volume 13, Number 92 
November 15, 2004

In This Issue: What you need to know about CALEA and VOIP

Learn more about Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), keep up to date on this quickly-changing issue, and read the comments that ALA signed on to in response to the FCC's Notice of Proposed Rulemaking at <http://www.ala.org/ala/washoff/WOissues/techinttele/calea/calea.htm>

CALEA, passed in October 1994, forces telecommunications carriers to comply with law enforcements' wiretapping requests. When the Act was passed, Congress drew a distinction between public, circuit-switched telecommunications services (telephony, fax, and the like) and "information services" in order to balance privacy and regulatory interests. Similarly, Congress exempted private telephone networks from the law. Consequently, CALEA applies only to public, circuit-switched telecommunication services and explicitly exempts information services such as Internet services.

The development of Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) services -- essentially, telephone service running over the Internet -- has made this separation difficult to maintain. Law enforcement agencies feel that VOIP presents a loophole in CALEA, and they have made multiple requests to the FCC to extend CALEA to include Internet services.

In September 2004, the FCC released a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) outlining how CALEA could be extended to include Internet service providers. Since without explicit and broad exemption, this action could present significant financial burdens for libraries, ALA is advocating on behalf of libraries in this important debate.


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ALA Washington Office, 1301 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W., Suite 403, Washington, D.C. 20004-1701; phone: 202.628.8410 or 800.941.8478 toll-free; fax: 202.628.8419; e-mail: alawash@alawash.org; Web site: http://www.ala.org/washoff.  Executive Director: Emily Sheketoff. Office of Government Relations: Lynne Bradley, Director; Carol Ashworth, Don Essex, Joshua Farrelman, Erin Haggerty, Patrice McDermott and Miriam Nisbet. Office for Information Technology Policy: Rick Weingarten, Director; Carrie Lowe, Kathy Mitchell, Carrie Russell. ALAWON Editor: Bernadette Murphy.