Score one for the wireless industry. The D.C. Federal Court of Appeals last week ruled that the Federal Communications Commission must use a narrower legal standard in interpreting the Communications for Law Enforcement Act, a 1994 digital wiretap law designed to help law-enforcement officers catch bad guys talking on wireless phones.
Despite its noble roots, this law has been nothing but trouble as industry and government have fought to find the middle ground between protecting the individual’s rights vs. the rights of the public to a safe society.
The FBI and Justice Department believed CALEA rules allowed them to implement a nine-point punch list that they said would help them keep up with technology-savvy criminals.
The wireless industry disagreed.
The FCC ruled that six of the nine items the FBI wanted were within the legal realm of the digital wiretap law.
The wireless industry again disagreed and took its complaint to court, along with privacy advocates who were up in arms over the FCC’s interpretation of the law.
For the most part, the appeals court ruled on the side of the wireless industry and privacy advocates.
How can everyone read the same law and come up with so many interpretations? If you ask the wireless industry, it will say because the FBI and Justice Department are power-grabbing agencies (and no one likes a power grabber). Essentially, CTIA said just that in its press release on the court ruling: “The FBI’s attempts to expand its wiretapping capabilities through CALEA has been nothing more than a massive power grab, going well beyond current law without the consent of Congress.”
Will the Justice Department fight this issue all the way to the Supreme Court? Are the courts hobbling the FBI in its efforts to make the United States of America a safer place?
It’s Big Brother vs. the Right to Privacy, ensured by the U.S. Constitution-a right more sacred than apple pie or baseball.
Or is it the Men in Blue vs. Organized Crime, and once again, the Men in Blue are at a significant disadvantage compared to the criminals we expect them to take off our streets.
Stay tuned. I sense this issue isn’t over, even if no one argues the punch-list items to a higher court. There is too much at stake in this battle over personal privacy and public safety. And each time technology advances, the line must be re-drawn.
