Fox News goes overboard. Stewart Baker says Fox News misrepresented his statements (below).

The FBI is likely to press providers of those services to centralize communications in nodes where interception will be more convenient, and it is likely to call on packet data services to build systems that provide more information about the communications of their subscribers.

The vehicle for this initiative is CALEA, the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, a 1994 enactment that actually requires telecom carriers to redesign their networks to provide better wiretap capabilities.

The act is supposed to exempt information services, but the vagueness of that provision has encouraged the FBI to expand its mandate into packet-data communications. The Bureau is now preparing a general CALEA proposal for all packet-data systems. While I have not seen it, the Bureau’s past interventions into packet-data and other communications architecture have had two characteristics — they have sought more centralization in order to simplify interception and they have asked providers to generate new data messages about their subscribers’ activities — messages that are of value only to law enforcement.

There are real legal and policy questions that should be raised about this effort. In my view, it goes beyond what Congress intended in 1994. And the implications for Internet users and technologies deserve to be debated. But making these points, as I did with Fox News, is not the same as saying that the FBI has a firm plan to centralize the Internet and build back doors into all ISP networks. [thanks to Lynette Millett]