Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd announced a patent titled “A method, gateway device, system, and storage medium for legal wiretapping” on March 30. The Chinese Patent Office’s website shows that the application date of the patent is February 28, 2017.
The patent’s description mentions that in order to ensure the security of the network, carrying out legal wiretapping is a common means. The focus of this patent, obviously is to solve the problem that legitimate wiretapping centers cannot access the local user device’s service data.
In fact, it is not new in the industry that Huawei applies the patent related to legal eavesdropping. Searching for the keyword “legal wiretapping” on the website of the Chinese Patent Office, one can find 83 granted Chinese invention patents, 38 of which were applied for by Huawei Technologies Co. The remaining 45 patents were applied for by Ericsson, Intel, Nokia, ZTE and other companies, as well as some scientific research units.
For legal wiretapping, Chinese law clearly stipulates that the state security organs may take technical reconnaissance measures for the purpose of detecting acts that endanger national security, in accordance with relevant state regulations and after strict approval procedures. State security organs for the need to maintain national security, can check the electronic communication tools, equipment and other equipment and facilities of organizations and individuals.
There has been much mature international experience with legislation on legal wiretapping. For example, the U.S. passed the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act in 1968, whose Title III sets rules for obtaining wiretap orders in the country.
After the United States introduced the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) and other laws to make further regulatory adjustments to legal wiretapping.
In addition, some countries and international organizations have also launched technical standards to regulate electronic eavesdropping. For example, the America’s CALEA standards, the Europe’s ETSI standards, Russia’s SORM standards, etc.
