Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA)

Legislation passed by Congress in 1996 requiring telecommunications carriers to comply with wiretapping requests made by law enforcement. A distinction was made in CALEA between telecommunications services (telephony, fax, etc.) and information services in an attempt to balance privacy and regulatory interests. A line was also drawn between public circuit-switched telecommunications networks and private telephone networks, with the former subject to CALEA and the latter exempt. In response to subsequent development of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services (telephone service running over the Internet), law enforcement agencies petitioned the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in 2004 to provide access under CALEA to VoIP and other broadband packet switching services in the interest of national security. The American Library Association (ALA) joined the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) and the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) in filing comments before the FCC seeking exemption of libraries from CALEA and in a petition before the District of Columbia Court of Appeals arguing that the FCC lacked jurisdiction to extend CALEA to the Internet. In 2006 the DC Circuit Court of Appeals supported the FCC in extending CALEA to Internet access and VoIP, but the decision had no direct effect on libraries because the FCC previously determined that it was not in the public interest to cover libraries.