FBI VoIP Surveillance Requirements Leaked

Wikileaks recently published a leaked 88 page document entitled FBI Electronic Surveillance Needs for Carrier-Grade Voice over Packet (CGVoP) Service (PDF), which is part of the CALEA Implementation Plan published in January 2003. The document describes detailed FBI requirements for surveillance of phone calls made utilizing packet networks as their transport. The document broadly defines CGVoP Service as:

“The set of subscription-based voice services and features provided over carrier-managed packet networks, and includes wireline and wireless services.”

The document covers such surveillance events as:

  • Registration and Authorization events including address registration and de-registration, mobility authorization and de-authorization
  • Call Management events including call origination, termination, answer, call release, address resolution, admission control, and media modification
  • Signaling events including subject signaling, network signaling, and post-cut-through dialing and signaling
  • Feature Use events including call redirection, party hold, party retrieve, party join, party drop, call merge, and call split
  • Communication Content events including content delivery start, change, and stop, as well as content unavailable
  • Feature Management events including feature activation and deactivation
  • Surveillance Status events including surveillance activation, continuation, change, and deactivation.

The document also discusses authorized access to identifying information and communication content, and more generalized surveillance requirements. It looks like they’ve fairly well covered the bases…