FBI's $500 Million Wiretap Retrofitting Fund Empty
Friday, March 28, 2008 at 12:33AM The FBI has gone through nearly all of its $500 millon budget for making old telephone switches wiretap friendly, but an FBI survey showed that nearly 40 percent of the nation's switches still aren't up to federal wiretapping standards, according to a new report from the Justice Department's inspector general.
A 1994 law known as the Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act or CALEA requires all telephone switches installed after 1995 to comply with detailed wiretapping rules, and Congress set aside a half billion dollars for the FBI to dole out to help carriers make older landline switches compliant.
Cell phone switches, however, are all compliant and nearly all FBI surveillance targets cell phones and pagers. In 2005, the feds got some 1800 criminal wiretap court orders, along with nearly 2,200 court orders for anti-terrorism and foreign intelligence wiretaps.
According to a redacted report (.pdf) from the DOJ's Inspector General, the FBI has only a little more than $5000 left in dedicated CALEA funds, which mostly went towards paying switch manufacturers to write wiretapping software and issue licenses to use that software for older switches.
The audit says it is not possible to tell if the money was well-spent, since neither the telecoms nor the switch makers are keen on sharing information.
Though the FBI has a well-earned reputation for bungling large technology projects, the FBI successfully built a sprawling surveillance network that taps into key telecom facilities around the country.
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