5 April 2000
Source: Hardcopy US national newspaper.
By DAVID S. CLOUD And DAVID ROGERS
WASHINGTON -- The telecommunications industry is pressing Congress for full payment of nearly $500 million to help companies fund software upgrades needed to enable law-enforcement agencies to wiretap digital- and wireless-telephone networks.
An emergency spending bill approved by the House last week would make the final $382 million available, but the financing is threatened by the Senate's stalling over the larger appropriations package. The budget fighting could further delay the phone companies' compliance with a 1994 surveillance law, already nearly two years behind schedule.
Since the early 1990s, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has been warning that conversion to digital and wireless equipment was threatening to undermine the usefulness of court-approved phone surveillance. Traditional intercept gear monitors a single line, recording incoming and outgoing call information. But digital systems don't have analog pulses that make such information readily obtainable. And when digital switches route a call using a feature such as call forwarding, it isn't detectable.
"This is another debacle," said GOP Rep. Hal Rogers of Kentucky, who oversees the Justice Department's budget. "There are some things that can wait. This isn't one of them." In a letter to Congress last month, acting Drug Enforcement Administration Chief Donnie Marshall said the delay could reduce "our current ability to listen in on the inner sanctums of drug-trafficking organizations."
The telephone funding is caught in a larger fight now affecting billions of dollars for the Pentagon and to fight narcotics trafficking in Colombia. Disgruntled House Republicans, who won a strong vote for the package last week, will meet with GOP senators today to discuss the Senate leadership's refusal to take up the measure
The Clinton administration weighed in by condemning the delay as "an unnecessary cost to Americans at home, to our interests abroad and to our military readiness around the world." The impasse also demonstrates the divisions in the GOP and weakness of the leadership as it tries to appease its conservatives and set a schedule that will allow Congress to adjourn as quickly as possible this election year.
"No, I don't think [the bill] is dead," said Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Ted Stevens of Alaska, who has allied with Speaker Dennis Hastert of Illinois in favor of moving a bill. But Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott of Mississippi maintains that he will save time in October by scuttling the measure now and parsing out its different pieces among the 13 annual appropriations measures for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1. To the extent that real emergencies exist, Mr. Lott believes the pressure will help him get a head start on the appropriations process this summer. To an unusual degree, Republicans are pressing to move some of the biggest bills -- including defense and the health and education budgets -- early in hopes of avoid the typical year-end crunch.
Democrats, and many Republicans on the Appropriations Committees, argue that the leadership would do better if it came up with a realistic budget at the outset. Already there are warnings that the spending numbers for next year are too tight, and whatever bills move first, the real test is how much money is left at the end for the rest.
In the case of the telephone money, this same rule applies. The industry would like the full $500 million in place by June 30, and the House resorted to declaring the obligation a "contingent emergency" to get around budget limits for this year. A Senate draft circulated this week by the Appropriations Committee staff declared no such emergency -- then allowed only $100 million.
The 1994 wiretap law provides for government reimbursement to companies that upgrade switches sold before the law went into effect. The FBI has reached tentative agreements to pay major equipment manufacturers, including Nortel Networks Corp., Lucent Technologies Inc., Siemens AG and Motorola Inc., for the cost of developing the upgrades. But none of the manufacturers have been willing to complete deals until Congress appropriates the reimbursement money.
Grant Seiffert, a lobbyist with the Telecommunications Industry Association, said: "If funding isn't put in the coffers this year, it's going to create major problems for carriers."