CALEA (Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act)

Also known as: 47 USC 1001

CALEA is a 1994 United States federal law that requires telecommunications carriers and equipment manufacturers to build lawful interception capabilities into their networks so that law enforcement can access call content and call-identifying information under valid court orders. It has since been extended to broadband and interconnected VoIP providers, and is the US counterpart to ETSI LI standards used elsewhere.

Categories: SignalingThreats and AttacksInternet and Routing

CALEA in context

Signaling protocols carry the control-plane messages that set up calls, register subscribers and route SMS. SS7, Diameter, GTP-C and SIP are the four dominant families, and interconnect exposure of any of them is treated by GSMA as top-tier telecom risk.

Telecom threats range from opportunistic SMS phishing and SIM swap to nation-state grade location tracking. The common thread is that most attacks exploit the inherited trust model of legacy signaling protocols.

To place CALEA in the wider telecom-security picture, review Exposure Mapping, A5/2, Anomaly Detection, ASN, Attack Surface Mapping and BGP — each entry cross-references back to this page so you can walk the topic in either direction.

Related terms

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