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Politech is the oldest Internet resource devoted to politics and technology. Launched in 1994 by Declan McCullagh, the mailing list has chronicled the growing intersection of culture, technology, politics, and law. Since 2000, so has the Politech web site.
Here's some background on CALEA, aka Digital Telephony, aka the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act: http://www.politechbot.com/cgi-bin/politech.cgi?name=calea Two interesting posts (from Barry and John, four years ago): http://www.politechbot.com/p-00656.html http://www.politechbot.com/p-00653.html One section of CALEA, for example, says a "telecommunications carrier shall ensure that its equipment, facilities, or services that provide a customer or subscriber [to communicate] are capable of... expeditiously isolating and enabling the government... to intercept... all wire and electronic communications..." http://www.epic.org/privacy/wiretap/calea/calea_law.html -Declan --- http://www.metaswitch.com/news/calea.htm Press Release: MetaSwitch VP3500 Completes CALEA Review with FBI Next Generation Class 5 Switch vendor offers on-board solution for service providers Alameda, CA: April 10, 2003. MetaSwitch, supplier of the VP3500, the industry's first true Next Generation Class 5 Switch, announced today that it has completed an extensive review with the FBI, which demonstrates that the MetaSwitch CALEA specification meets the J-STD-025A standard for circuit switching equipment. CALEA, the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, requires that U.S. carriers provide Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs) with the continued ability to perform electronic surveillance with existing and new telecommunications switching equipment. Electronic surveillance consists of either the interception of call content (commonly referred to as wiretaps) and/or the interception of call-identifying information (commonly referred to as dialed-number extraction). "We simplified providing CALEA compliance for our customers by incorporating CALEA functionality on-board the MetaSwitch VP3500 rather than requiring additional external equipment", said John Lazar, Vice President of Sales and Marketing. "We are ensuring the completeness of our solution with ongoing testing with the FBI." In light of the current uncertainty in world events, electronic surveillance is becoming increasingly important as a tool for law enforcement agencies. Therefore it is vital that vendors and telecommunications carriers develop and deploy solutions that support electronic surveillance, in both traditional TDM and next generation packet-based networks. Technical requirements or standards for CALEA capabilities have been established for several categories of telecommunications by industry associations or standard-setting organizations, in consultation with representatives of the law enforcement community. The Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) and Committee T1, standards organizations, are currently working on a further revision, J-STD-025B to cover packet based networks. About MetaSwitch MetaSwitch, a division of Data Connection, is the result of 21 years of experience supplying leading-edge technology to the telecommunications industry. Data Connection's track record of consistent profitability ensures long-term commitment to product development and customer support. The MetaSwitch VP3500 Next Generation Class 5 Switch offers service providers an immediate solution for broadband (VoIP and/or VoATM) and POTS service and a future-proof "softswitch" architecture for enhanced applications. MetaSwitch has offices in Alameda, CA, Dallas, TX, and Reston, VA in the US, and London, Chester and Edinburgh in the UK. For more information, see www.metaswitch.com. Contact: Carol Daniels MetaSwitch 510 748 8230 chd@metaswitch.com Data Connection and MetaSwitch are trademarks of Data Connection Limited and Data Connection Corporation. Brands and products referenced herein are the trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/ Like Politech? Make a donation here: http://www.politechbot.com/donate/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------