Looking For Lessons in Past Wiretapping Battle

In the good old days, there were copper lines and the feds liked to tap them. Then came digital switches and phones that could roam, and the feds wanted to tap them, too.

And in 1994, after acrimonious debate that ripped apart an emergent tech-focussed civil liberties group, the feds won and the phone system's architecture would have surveillance baked into the switches in perpetuity.

The National Journal's Shane Harris dives into the 1990s-era story of the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, with an eye to understanding the current legislative deadlock over how far to expand the government's surveillance powers and whether to pardon the nations' telecoms massive violations of federal privacy law at the behest of the Bush Administration.

Harris seems to be asking where has compromise gone, and weaves a good tale about CALEA:

But despite the occasionally extreme positions and deeply held convictions of all of these players, the most important laws governing wiretapping, electronic surveillance, and privacy have been the product of negotiation, of people gathering in a room, sitting at a table, and talking – sometimes screaming – until they reached a settlement. The current debate, however, is missing that crucial spirit. Whereas before, adversaries trusted each other enough at a basic level to make deals, however temporary, today's opposing sides seem unwilling to compromise to pass new surveillance laws that the nation can live with. It's not entirely clear where or why minds turned so stubborn. But to understand today's political calcification, it helps to recall a simpler time. [...]

The meetings featured intense, nitty-gritty debates over the technical aspects of the law. The FBI wanted guarantees that the telecom system would never mature beyond the reach of its wiretaps. Some companies saw this as heavy-handed regulation, and a number of telecom officials shared the activists' belief that the government was in fact after a permanent covert backdoor into the phone system. The negotiations helped to somewhat dampen the suspicions, however, and the talks went forward because no one in the room disagreed with the fundamental premise that the government had the right to wiretap.

It's a good story but Harris fails to capture one of the salient features of this Administration: it's fondness for end-of-the-world rhetoric and exaggerations.

This administration honed these fear mongering tactics over the last six years to exploit 9/11 in order to scare lawmakers and the American people into believing that simple laws and the country's core principles – limited government and due process – don't apply any more.

It's only in the last few months that we've seen the American public and the country's opposition party learn to distrust these exaggerations and reject acting out of fear.

Until that truth gap closes – which won't happen until this administration passes into the history books – any compromise on wiretapping is a bad deal for the country and our civil liberties.

See Also:

• Civil Libertarians See a Hopeful Dawn in 2009 ... the Fools
• FBI's $500 Million Wiretap Retrofitting Fund Empty
• Reminder: Monday is Wiretap the Internet Day
• FBI's Wiretap Network Revealed And Request for Reader Document ...

Photo: Christopher Matson