Technology companies should be required to ensure that law enforcement agencies can install wiretaps on Internet traffic and new generations of digital communications, the Justice Department says.
The push would effectively expand the scope of the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, a 1994 law that requires the telecommunications industry to build into its products tools that U.S. investigators can use to eavesdrop on conversations with a court order.
Fearful that federal agents can't install wiretaps against criminals using the latest communications technologies, lawyers for the Justice Department, FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration said their proposals "require immediate attention and resolution" by the Federal Communications Commission.
They called wiretaps "an invaluable and necessary tool for federal, state, and local law enforcement in their fight against criminals, terrorists, and spies."
"The ability of federal, state, and local law enforcement to carry out critical electronic surveillance is being compromised today," they wrote in legal papers filed with the FCC earlier this week. "Communications among surveillance targets are being lost.... These problems are real, not hypothetical."
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