LAWFUL INTERCEPTION

What is lawful interception?

Lawful Interception (LI) is a tool for Police and other Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs) when investigating serious crimes. Sometimes called “wiretapping”, LI is the process where an LEA can require a telecommunications provider to intercept the voice, data and message based communications of a subscriber and pass them to the LEA.

Intercepts must include all of the target subscribers communications and signalling. Other subscribers communications must not be included. Intercepts have to be an accurate record that can be used as evidence in court and law enforcement need to receive them in real time to be able to react quickly to what they learn.

ETSI Standards

For most of the world the standards for LI are set by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI). ETSI standards describe how LI systems work and how intercepts are formatted. Intercepts include both the communications themselves (contents of communications - CCs) and signalling data (intercept related information - IRIs). Standards exist for all types of networks. OpenLI implements the standards relating to IP based networking:

  • ETSI TS 101 671 Handover interface for the lawful interception of telecommunications traffic

  • ETSI TS 102 232-1Handover Interface and Service-Specific Details (SSD) for IP delivery; Part 1: Handover specification for IP delivery

  • ETSI TS 102 232-2 Handover Interface and Service-Specific Details (SSD) for IP delivery; Part 2: Service-specific details for messaging services

  • ETSI TS 102 232-3 Handover Interface and Service-Specific Details (SSD) for IP delivery; Part 3: Service-specific details for internet access services

  • ETSI TS 102 232-5 Handover Interface and Service-Specific Details (SSD) for IP delivery; Part 5: Service-specific details for IP Multimedia Services

  • ETSI TS 102 232-7 V3.3.1 Handover Interface and Service-Specific Details (SSD) for IP delivery; Part 7: Service-specific details for Mobile Services

  • ETSI TS 102 233 Service specific details for E-mail services