NICE Systems today announced that it has won a "mega security contract" from a government agency, the first phase of which is expected to generate more than $55 million over the next two to three years. The government agency will be implementing NICE's NiceTrack technology, which is used for "lawful intercept," which is the PC way of saying "wiretapping."
I have followed the Clinton wiretapping law since it was first passed in 1994, all the way through to the May 2007 deadline for all telecoms companies to comply with CALEA (the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act) -- as well as the subsequent expansion of the law to include all broadband internet communications. In fact I even wrote a bunch of articles about SS8 Networks and other vendors offering CALEA compliance solutions in 2006 and 2007 for TMCnet. I don't pretend to be an expert on the subject, but I probably know a little more about it than the average person.
But there's one thing about the law that I still don't get (and I know I'm not alone): Are terrorists or anyone else engaged in illegal activity actually going to say what it is that they're going to do over the telephone - or say anything that even hints at it? I mean, from what I understand, terrorists are far more likely to use some alternative form of communication that is "un-tappable" if they're planning some major event. Heck, they could even do it right over the phone simply by substituting common words or phrases in English that, when re-interpreted, could have a completely different meaning - a "code" if you will - such as "I'm going grocery shopping today at 12:34 p.m. I'm going to buy 1 gallon of milk and a half dozen eggs," and that could be all it takes to give other terrorists in a cell all the basic information the need (such as date, time, place) for carrying out an attack.
I would even take that statement one step further by arguing that even today's advanced speech analytics software, with all its fancy "emotion detection" and "stress detection," is ineffective because, hey, let's face it, the bad guys know about this stuff too. I've read that the government already has major contracts in place with Nuance, Verint and other software makers specializing in speech analytics, with some people presenting conspiracy theories that this software is being used across the networks of all the major telecoms players.
I guess what I'm saying is, why is our government spending millions if not billions of taxpayer dollars on technology that simply has not proven itself as a crime fighting tool? And if it has resulted in some success, why is there no substantive evidence to that end?
To back up my point, check out this article on the San Francisco Chronicle's website (SFGate) from July referring to recent report from the federal government documenting the effectiveness of its wiretapping program. According to the article, "Most intelligence officials interviewed 'had difficulty citing specific instances' when the National Security Agency's wiretapping program contributed to successes against terrorists."
While the government report concluded that the program obtained information that "had value in some counterterrorism investigations, it generally played a limited role in the FBI's overall counterterrorism efforts," the article states.
I have followed the Clinton wiretapping law since it was first passed in 1994, all the way through to the May 2007 deadline for all telecoms companies to comply with CALEA (the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act) -- as well as the subsequent expansion of the law to include all broadband internet communications. In fact I even wrote a bunch of articles about SS8 Networks and other vendors offering CALEA compliance solutions in 2006 and 2007 for TMCnet. I don't pretend to be an expert on the subject, but I probably know a little more about it than the average person.
But there's one thing about the law that I still don't get (and I know I'm not alone): Are terrorists or anyone else engaged in illegal activity actually going to say what it is that they're going to do over the telephone - or say anything that even hints at it? I mean, from what I understand, terrorists are far more likely to use some alternative form of communication that is "un-tappable" if they're planning some major event. Heck, they could even do it right over the phone simply by substituting common words or phrases in English that, when re-interpreted, could have a completely different meaning - a "code" if you will - such as "I'm going grocery shopping today at 12:34 p.m. I'm going to buy 1 gallon of milk and a half dozen eggs," and that could be all it takes to give other terrorists in a cell all the basic information the need (such as date, time, place) for carrying out an attack.
I would even take that statement one step further by arguing that even today's advanced speech analytics software, with all its fancy "emotion detection" and "stress detection," is ineffective because, hey, let's face it, the bad guys know about this stuff too. I've read that the government already has major contracts in place with Nuance, Verint and other software makers specializing in speech analytics, with some people presenting conspiracy theories that this software is being used across the networks of all the major telecoms players.
I guess what I'm saying is, why is our government spending millions if not billions of taxpayer dollars on technology that simply has not proven itself as a crime fighting tool? And if it has resulted in some success, why is there no substantive evidence to that end?
To back up my point, check out this article on the San Francisco Chronicle's website (SFGate) from July referring to recent report from the federal government documenting the effectiveness of its wiretapping program. According to the article, "Most intelligence officials interviewed 'had difficulty citing specific instances' when the National Security Agency's wiretapping program contributed to successes against terrorists."
While the government report concluded that the program obtained information that "had value in some counterterrorism investigations, it generally played a limited role in the FBI's overall counterterrorism efforts," the article states.
And, as I mentioned before, what about alternative, peer-to-peer technologies that are practically "untappable," such as Skype? It seems to me that all of these wiretapping solutions in the end have only one effect, and that is to force the "bad guys" to use alternative forms of communication.
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