How Do The Feds Tap Phone Lines?
In the past, law enforcement did not need the help of carriers to conduct wiretaps; they simply went to court, got a warrant, and walked into the phone company’s central office and tapped into the copper line with alligator clips, said Center for Democracy and Technology staff counsel John Morris.
But with fiber replacing copper wires, the deployment of digital switches at the central office, and the growth of cellular and Internet traffic, law enforcement must now rely on the expertise of service providers to help carry out interception warrants.
Carriers and service providers assist law enforcement in wiretapping by patching into a digital switch at their central offices or at an aggregation point and programming in what number will be traced or what calls will be intercepted.
Once the information is gathered, it is sent via a private link paid for by law enforcement to the agency that requested it. After receiving the data from communication providers, law enforcement must minimize it, or extract only what it needs for that case.
Once the minimization is complete, the analysis begins. Most of the initial analysis is automated, although if the database algorithm detects certain key words in a call, it forwards the issue to a person.
For example, a call which contains certain key words could be sent to an Arabic translator for further investigation. This filtering saves on the amount of human resources needed by law enforcement, said Winn Schwartau, author of “Cybershock and Information Warfare.”
Abstracted by the National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Center(NLECTC) from Network World (02/13/06); Gittlen, Sandra.