Trade Group Asks FCC’s Help in Wiretap Dispute

WASHINGTON — For nearly two years now, a bitter battle has been raging over the extent to which law enforcement authorities should be allowed to use powerful new surveillance technologies to keep tabs on users of telephone and computer networks.

The Justice Department has been trying to implement a 1994 federal law aimed at ensuring that the emerging digital telephone network will accommodate government requests to conduct wiretap and surveillance activities.

The department wants to be able to use the precision of digital technology to determine the exact location of a cellular phone caller within half a second, to wiretap parties to a conference call even after the target of a court order has gotten off the line and to monitor other telephone network data such as the length of phone calls and voicemail messages.

But communications industry executives and privacy advocates have been fighting the effort. And now an influential trade group has asked the Federal Communications Commission to referee the dispute in hopes that an agreement can be reached.

“We need to change the venue,” said Thomas Wheeler, president of the Cellular Telephone Industry Assn., or CTIA, a Washington trade group that represents wireless companies and that asked the FCC to intervene. “The FBI is demanding to expand the scope of existing wiretap law, and we don’t think that’s right.”

“I think the FCC has to get involved in it,” said James X. Dempsey, staff counsel for the Center for Democracy and Technology, a Washington watchdog group on technology issues. “Congress clearly intended that the FCC would have a role in standards-setting . . . and they are required by [law] to look at the privacy implications” of changes the industry makes to wiretap and surveillance standards.

FBI officials, who contend that their goal is to preserve their crime-fighting skills in the face of new communications technology, say they are disappointed by CTIA’s move.

“It is unfortunate that one of the telecommunications industry associations has chosen to abandon, prematurely, the industry’s own standards-setting process,” FBI spokesman Barry Smith said. “The longer these technological impediments remain in place . . . the longer the public safety of this country remains in jeopardy.”

Although the Digital Telephony Act applies to all telecommunications carriers, CTIA is virtually alone in fighting the FBI because it believes the civil liberties of wireless phone users are especially vulnerable.

But law enforcement officials say that since the 1994 law was passed, it has become increasingly difficult to track criminals as more and more of them embrace a generation of virtually untraceable and un-tappable wireless phones.

Currently, carriers can pinpoint a cell site that receives a given wireless call, but have not yet perfected technology that can pinpoint the location of a caller.

FCC officials will not comment on whether they would try to mediate the dispute.

The Digital Telephony Act established a standards-setting process that allows the federal government to appeal disagreements to the FCC. An agency ruling can then be appealed by either party to federal court. Sources close to the dispute say Justice Department and telephone industry executives plan to meet next month without the FCC in an effort to break the impasse over wiretap rules.

Jube Shiver Jr. can be reached at Jube.S[email protected]