Paying for Phone Taps 
1:24 am  Mar  7, 1992 by el@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu in peg:talk.pol.drugs
Another Newspaper Article
The Daily Texan
Friday, March 6, 1992
Page 3
 
   PHONE TAPPING PLAN PROPOSED
Law Enforcement Agencies Would Have Easier Access
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Associated Press
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WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration wants you to pay a little
more for telephone service to make it easier for the FBI or local police
to listen in on the conversations of suspected criminals.
 
The Justice Department is circulating a proposal in Congress that
would force telephone companies to install state-of-the-art technology to
accommodate official wiretaps. And it would authorize the Federal 
Communications Commission to grant telephone companies rate increases
to defray the cost.
 
A copy of the legislation was obtained by The Associated Press.
Attorney General William Barr discussed the proposal last week
with Sen. Ernest Hollings, D-S.C., chairman of the Senate Commerce
Committee, which oversees the FCC according to congressional sources
who spoke on condition of anonymity.
 
Justice Department spokesman Paul McNulty refused to comment on
the proposal.
 
The bill was drafted by the FBI and the Justice Department in
response to dramatic changes in telephone technology that make it difficult
for traditional wiretapping methods to pick up conversations between two
parties on a telephone line.
 
The Justice Department's draft proposal states that the widespread
use of digital transmission, fiber optics and other technologies "make it
increasingly difficult for government agencies to implement lawful orders
or authorizations to intercept communications in order to enforce the laws
and protect the national security."
 
The FBI has already asked Congress for $26.6 million in its 1993
fiscal year budget to help finance a five-year research effort to help
keep pace with the changes in telephone technology.
 
With the new technology that is being installed nationwide, police
can no longer go to a telephone switching center and put wiretap equipment
on a designated lines.
 
The advent of so-called digital transmission means that
conversations are broken into bits of information and sent over phone
lines and put back together at the end of the wire.
 
The bill would give the FCC 180 days to devise rules and standards
for telephone companies to give law enforcement agencies access to
conversations for court-ordered wiretapping.
 
The attorney general would be empowered to require that part of the
rulemaking proceedings would be closed to the public, to protect the
security of eavesdropping techniques used by law enforcement.
Phone companies would have 180 days to make the necessary changes
once the FCC issues the regulations.
 
The bill would prohibit telephone companies and private exchanges
from using equipment that doesn't comply with the new FCC technology standards.
 
It would give the attorney general power to seek court injunctions
against companies that violate the regulations and collect civil penalties
of $10,000 a day.
 
It also would give the FCC the power to raise telephone rates under
its jurisdiction to reimburse carriers. The FCC sets interstate long distance
rates and a monthly end-user charge -- currently $2.50 -- that subscribers
pay to be connected to the nationwide telephone network.
 
Telephone companies will want to examine the proposal to determine
its impact on costs, security of phone lines and the 180-day deadline for
implementing the changes, said James Sylvester, director of infrastructure
and privacy for Bell Atlantic.
 
Though no cost estimates were made available, Sylvester estimated it
could cost companies millions of dollars to make the required changes. But
rate hikes for individual customers would probably be quite small, he said.