Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act

Amends the Federal criminal code to require a telecommunications carrier to ensure that its services or facilities that provide a customer or subscriber with the ability to originate, terminate, or direct communications are capable of: (1) isolating and enabling the Government to intercept all of the subscriber's wire and electronic communications over such facilities concurrently with their transmission or at any later time acceptable to the Government; (2) isolating and enabling the Government to access call-identifying information (CII) that is reasonably available to the carrier except that, with regard to information acquired solely pursuant to the authority for pen registers and trap and trace devices, such CII shall not include any information that may disclose the physical location of the subscriber (except to the extent that the location may be determined from the telephone number); (3) delivering intercepted communications and CII to the Government in a format such that they may be transmitted by federally procured facilities or services to a location other than the premises of the carrier; and (4) facilitating authorized communications interceptions and CII access unobtrusively and with a minimum of interference with any subscriber's telecommunications service in a manner that protects the privacy and security of communications and CII not authorized to be intercept…

Congressional Research Service · 1994-08-09