Not sure why this is on the front page, but to clarify it's required by the FCC [0] for carriers. Microtik, just like every other network vendor, has this in their product (port mirroring for law enforcement) so that they can check the box. CALEA has been around since the 90s [1].
Specifically, _1994_, another banner year for undermining civil liberties and privacy, what with the passage of the new sentencing provisions of the federal crime bill and continuing effort to prevent wider use of encryption by individuals through action against PGP: all by a "liberal" US administration that would also accelerate consolidation of mass media in the hands of a few big corporations.
Yes, 1994 and 1996 [0] were both horrible years for bad "telecomm" policy. I remember debating this in my "Regulations" class in the early 2000s and how, even by then, we could see the potential longer term damages emerging. I think it also played a role in influencing the markets (with respect to tech companies) to think how they do (continuous growth / continuous significant increase in QoQ profits). The late 80s and early 90s were a wild ride of ignorance in policy making. The Clipper Chip, interesting takes on crypto export control all the way through the advent of the DMCA.
Interesting times with many unfortunate decisions.
It was passed in the 90s, but it wasn't required for ISPs until 2007. I was working at a small ISP at the time. I remember they picked a vendor and installed the box with a week or two to spare.
I found this interesting insofar as it is somewhat rare for endpoint CPEs to have these features baked in, in particular with any sort of CALEA semantics. This is almost always a burden pushed on the transitory service providers upstream from the device. Network device OEMs, in my experience running an ISP (in addition to both making routers and white-labeling them for our service), have never been held to the CALEA requirements historically.
The wikipedia article you shared actually states this pretty clearly as well:
>" The IP-based "soft switches" typically do not contain a built-in CALEA intercept feature; and other IP-transport elements (routers, switches, access multiplexers) almost always delegate the CALEA function to elements dedicated to inspecting and intercepting traffic. In such cases, hardware taps or switch/router mirror-ports are employed to deliver copies of all of a network's data to dedicated IP probes."
(I realize that Microtik's RouterOS may end up on headend router devices and that is likely why this exists, but the implementation details here are just a little odd when you can just port mirror on a switch instead)
> I found this interesting insofar as it is somewhat rare for endpoint CPEs to have these features baked in, in particular with any sort of CALEA semantics.
This isn't targeting CPE equipment - MicroTik is baking into their unified OS. If you're a service provider you don't configure CALEA in the CPE, you configure it upstream in the headend where all traffic from your customers egress your network. It's much easier to grab it all at the bottleneck than to have data streaming over your expensive last mile twice for each customer, that doesn't make any network architecture or OpEx sense. It's just easier to make CALEA a function of RouterOS vs target specific models. There's nothing specific about the hardware that's required to implement the functionality.
[0] https://www.fcc.gov/public-safety-and-homeland-security/poli... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Assistance_for_...