Lawful Interception

Lawful interception is the legally authorised real-time interception of telecommunications traffic for law-enforcement or national-security purposes, executed by the operator under warrant. The architecture is standardised by ETSI TS 102 232/103 221 and 3GPP TS 33.107/33.126, with strict access controls, audit, and separation between target identification, capture, and delivery to the law-enforcement monitoring facility.

Categories: Radio Access NetworkSignalingSecurity Controls

Lawful Interception in context

The radio access network is where mobile devices attach to the operator's infrastructure. Attacks in this layer include IMSI catching, rogue base stations and downgrade attacks; defenses rest on mutual authentication, integrity-protected signaling and Open RAN supply-chain hygiene.

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.

To place Lawful Interception in the wider telecom-security picture, review 1G, ITU, RADIUS, RTP, SIP and TCP — each entry cross-references back to this page so you can walk the topic in either direction.

Related terms

More from the TelcoSec Glossary

Browse the full TelcoSec Glossary, the Ultimate Guide to Mobile Network Security, or the P1 Arsenal of telecom-security tools.