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Understanding CALEA
The Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) is a federal law defining how telecommunications carriers
must assist law enforcement agencies in carrying out court-ordered wiretaps. While CALEA has historically been applied
only to traditional voice carriers, the FCC has recently issued orders extending CALEA to providers of broadband Internet
access and interconnected voice over IP services. With the new rules, educational networks are arguably subject to CALEA
compliance unless certain conditions are met.
This has been an issue of significant concern to organizations in research and education over the past several months and
continues to be followed closely. The future application of CALEA by courts and the FCC remains an evolving issue.
Merit has prepared a policy briefing on CALEA. The briefing is designed as a primer and could serve as an introduction and
summary for anyone who needs a clearer understanding of the issues. It summarizes the history of the law, describes the
recent FCC actions, and makes clear two key facts: The issues continue to evolve, and each organization should seek legal
counsel regarding its status under CALEA. The briefing also contains links to several sites that have full background on
CALEA. We hope this briefing is helpful and welcome your feedback on it.
Additionally, Merit is working on an technical design that would enable Merit to come into CALEA compliance should that become
necessary. A design document describes the model, which is also also shown in a diagram. Merit's requirements under CALEA are
not yet clear, and these documents are for planning and preparation only.
The following information describes Merit's activities, plans, and perspectives on CALEA. This information
is provided for the purpose of letting our community know what our views and activities are. It in no way intends
to be legal advice for our community. There are at least two active forums for the R&E community around this issue:
EDUCAUSE and the Quilt which may provide additional perspective.
Please feel free to distribute these documents within your organization. Merit will continue to revise the briefing and
architecture documents as issues develop.
OpenCALEAOpenCALEA
is a project intiated by Merit Network Inc. whose goal is to develop simple OpenSource based tools that can help the Internet Service Provider community to meet their CALEA compliance needs.
The project was started as an attempt to gain a technical understanding of the proposed standard and develop an implementation that would serve as a reference model. Community contibutions to the project are encouraged and greatly appreciated.
There is considerable confusion regarding CALEA and what it means to be CALEA compliant. It is upto individual organizations to decide for themselves what their obligations are regarding CALEA. OpenCALEA provides a community based implementation framework for helping with CALEA compliance.
Visit the OpenCALEA web site.
Merit Documents on CALEAThe documents available below are saved as PDF documents, which
require Adobe Acrobat Reader to view/print.
Adobe Acrobat Reader can be downloaded for free from
Adobe.
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Merit CALEA position with law references
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File Size: 58.5 KB |
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CALEA Compliance Test Architecture, September 15, 2006
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File Size: 108 KB |
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CALEA Compliance - A Feasibility Study, PowerPoint Presentation, October 25, 2006
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File Size: 608 KB |
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CALEA Compliance Update, December 19, 2006
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File Size: 54.2 KB |
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Policy Briefing: CALEA Compliance for Educational Organizations, December 20, 2006
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File Size: 201 KB |
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Overview of CALEA Conformance Proposed Standard PTSC-LAES-2006-084R6
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File Size: 530 KB |
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Merit's CALEA Compliance Architecture and Platform, "OpenCALEA"
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File Size: 1.14 MB |
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CALEA Filings and Procedural Steps
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File Size: 99.8 KB |
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FCC Public Notices- DA-06-2513 CALEA Compliance Monitoring Reports due 2/12/2007 (Released 12/14/2006)
- DA-06-2512 CALEA System and Security Filing Requirement due March 12, 2007 (Released 12/14/2006)
CALEA and Beyond Workshop
Merit Network hosted a one-day CALEA workshop on January 31, 2006. The workshop prepared attendees to make informed decisions about CALEA compliance and to understand ongoing requirements for law enforcement assistance.
An archive of material from the CALEA and Beyond Workshop is available.
Important CALEA links
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