Intercept Laws Across The World

SS8, a firm that specializes in assisting companies with CALEA requirements and reporting of compliance, put out an interesting guide for people who have to enforce law enforcement demands for their business.  I’ve only dealt with United States domestic traffic and laws personally, so I read their report with a fair bit of interest.  It’s not super in depth unfortunately, but I’m sure for a consultation fee they’d talked to me about more details for as long as I could pay.

While the report isn’t extremely detailed, to be fair, often the legislation itself isn’t very detailed.  As an lawyer can tell you, there’s a difference between the way a law is written and how law is actually acted upon after judges interpret the intentions of the legislators. Anyhow, below are a few interesting examples I pulled out of the report.

In Korea, as of 2004, if a prosecutor or intelligence agent requests the location of a mobile phone user and it’s approved by the President or a very high level judge, that user must be notified of the requests 3 months afterwards.  While I’m sure that may be frustrating to some prosecutors it probably stops any abuse of the wiretapping system.  Frankly, I’d like to see something like that enacted her in the good ol’ US of A.

In Belgium, as of 1994, wiretapping is only allowed in serious crimes such as terrorism.  And if they ask an expert for assistance in helping to decipher a code, the person is obligated to cooperate or they could be prosecuted.  Although, how you could tell if a mathmetician was sandbagging you is beyond me, let alone how you could prove it to anyone in a court.

Unbeknown to me, Israel still has an official censor for phone and postal matters.  So not only can you be listened in on, but if you say something bad for the state, I guess they can halt or bleep out the conversation.

For more summaries on other nation’s intercept laws, register at this link and SS8 will mail you a PDF, entitled The Ready Guide to Intercept Legislation, explaining all the different laws.  If you don’t want to give away your own email address, you can of course use tools like mailinator.com and still get the PDF.