FBI, SBC AND EPIC WADE INTO DEBATE ON VoIP REGULATION
Indicating the complexity of setting voice-over-Internet protocol (VoIP) rules, major federal law enforcers asked the FCC to set CALEA rules that would “ensure that no new loophole is created that allows criminals, terrorists and spies to use VoIP services to avoid lawfully authorized surveillance.” At the same time, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) said the FCC should “ensure the establishment of strong privacy safeguards” for VoIP.” And SBC said the FCC shouldn’t allow AT&T to avoid access charges for phone calls that traveled partly over an IP backbone.
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The FCC legally can’t make VoIP CALEA compliance voluntary, said a filing by the Justice Dept., FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration in response to the Dec. 1 VoIP forum. The FCC is required by Sec. 229(a) of the Communications Act to enforce CALEA, the agencies said: “The success of CALEA depends on consistent implementation [and] under a voluntary CALEA compliance scheme, law enforcement would have no enforcement mechanism against VoIP providers who do not cooperate.”
Meanwhile, “industry suffers from widespread confusion” over VoIP compliance with CALEA, the law enforcers said, including what capabilities are required and by what deadline: “Industry could unilaterally impose its own concept of appropriate assistance capabilities, leaving law enforcement shortchanged [with a system that] may arrive too late.”
However, EPIC said the FCC must “address the privacy implications of VoIP,” including preventing the use of VoIP’s capabilities, such as user location information, to increase surveillance of the public by govt. or private entities. “Used by government for law enforcement and national security purposes, unregulated access to location data threatens to create a society of ‘dataveillance,’ where data… is routinely collected for surveillance,” EPIC said.
The public also must be protected from “dataveillance” used by marketers to spam people about the nearest retail outlet, EPIC said. “A central requirement of a functional and trustworthy communications network is the assurance of privacy protection for users,” EPIC said, and such protection is “consistent with the history of privacy law in the United States.”
On access charges, SBC said AT&T was “unlawfully seeking to avoid paying access charges” for normal calls that moved over IP backbone but originated and terminated over the circuit-switched network. In an ex parte filing, SBC said AT&T’s petition (WC 02-361) “has nothing to do with VoIP service” because it provided no new functionality and wasn’t even marketed as a new service. It said requiring AT&T to pay access charges for such services wasn’t regulating the Internet and wouldn’t expose innocent CLECs to new access charge liabilities.
“Real VoIP services raise legitimate issues that warrant consideration in the context of an NPRM,” SBC said, including E-911, CALEA and access charge issues.
Meanwhile, MCI issued a report saying IP services should be regulated based on horizontal protocol layers rather than legacy “vertical silos,” such as wireline, wireless and Internet. The study said regulation should be modeled on IP layers, which include top layers of user applications and content, middle IP logic layers, and bottom layers of physical network facilities. It said the clash between vertical silos and horizontal layers resulted in gridlock. The MCI model targets the lower levels for regulation based on market power, rather than legacy service or labels. It said, for example, that VoIP would reside on the unregulated applications layer, with interconnection and universal service issues on the potentially regulated network layers.