The Federal Communications Commission is now requiring universities, including Marquette, to accommodate law enforcement Internet wiretaps by spring 2007, expanding the reach of an 11-year-old law.
Compliance with the law is estimated to cost the institutions at least $7 billion collectively to revamp their Internet computer networks to allow authorities to monitor online communications from e-mail to Internet phone calls.
Many college associations such as EDUCAUSE, a nonprofit coalition that has a membership of more than 2,000 colleges, including Marquette, are protesting the enforcement because of the cost and difficulty of complying on time.
Kathy Lang, chief officer of Infomation Technology Services, said she is paying close attention to the case and EDUCAUSE's protesting of the enforcement. If EDUCAUSE is not successful in its bid to make colleges exempt from the act, Marquette will comply with the FCC, Lang said.
"Depending on what the outcome is, we will determine what we need to do," she said. "We have to comply (with) all sorts of legislation; this would just be another one to the list."
The order is in response to security concerns identified in a March 2004 petition from the Department of Justice to the FCC, citing reasons of public safety for the order.
"We must strike a balance between fostering competitive broadband deployment with meeting the needs of the law enforcement community," FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said in a statement.
The new regulation has been met with harsh resistance from some college and university groups, which cite the cost for such a change and the lack of a history of federal authorities seeking to place wiretaps in college networks. Because many universities are facilities-based Internet providers, meaning they perform the function of private Internet companies by providing Web services to faculty, staff and students, it will cost each school an estimated $450 per student to buy the equipment to comply with the law.
"Requiring full compliance with proposed new rules would impose an unreasonable financial burden, increasing the costs of education and impacting innovation, with no guarantee of better security for our nation," Mark Luker, vice president of EDUCAUSE, said in a statement.
The new law expands the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, which was passed to ensure law enforcement agencies can still perform court-ordered wiretaps on digital systems, according to FCC spokesman Mark Wigfield.
The new requirement is meant to close loopholes in the act that increase the danger posed to American citizens by the potential illegal use of information by offering a surveillance-free means of communication, according to a statement released by FCC Commissioner Kathleen Abernathy.
The Communications Assistance act "was recently updated to broaden its definition of telecommunications stations beyond digital and wire services to those stations using Internet protocol," Wigfield said. "The order just informs those providers to start looking at ways to implement this system."
The order still requires a court-ordered subpoena. However, it allows a law enforcement agency to bypass the university by installing wiretaps remotely. College groups, such as EDUCAUSE, argue the regulation is not necessary because they have worked well with law enforcement agencies and the agencies are not prevented from having access to universities' networks.
"It is not in the public interest to require that every college, school, and library, redesign their networks just in case a lawful request for surveillance may arise in the future," Luker said in a statement.
The timeline for implementation of the act is alarming to many colleges and universities because the FCC does not have authority to grant extensions under the act.
"Where does that leave universities, colleges and other public entities for compliance?," EDUCAUSE attorney Albert Gidari asked in the group's response to the FCC. "The need for such rapid action would be very difficult for EDUCAUSE Coalition members."
Recently, the American Council on Education, the nation's largest higher education association, filed lawsuit over the new FCC regulations. The FCC said it was reviewing the order for possible exemptions and is seeking input from Internet providers regarding the obligations of the order, according to EDUCAUSE statement.
In EDUCAUSE's statement to the FCC, the group asks that the order be reversed and to not define universities providing Internet access to their faculty, staff and students as "telecommunication carriers" in the act.