ELEE is an ETSI compliant Lawful Interception solution developed from scratch. Our focus is to support latest ETSI standards, keep up with new technologies, and try to avoid legacy nightmares.
Our software is the first Lawful Interception solution developed primarily for 32/64-bit Single Board Computers (SBCs), based on ARM processors.
Scalability has been a major cornerstone of ELEE development since the very beginning.
Lawful Interception
Lawful Interception (LI) is a term commonly used in context of law enforcement agencies (LEAs) and Communication Service Providers (CSPs).
Due to advances in technology, LI systems have always been in a state of constant flux, trying to offer consistent support for both legacy technologies and keep up with emerging new standards.
The complexities of these systems stem from the fact that successful implementation is very much dependant on two way communication between LI vendors and LEAs.
LI Standards
There are currently two official lawful interception standards used worldwide:
1. Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA)
2. European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI)
To ensure systematic procedures for carrying out interception, while also lowering the costs
of interception solutions, industry groups and government agencies worldwide have attempted to standardize the technical processes behind lawful interception.
One organization, ETSI, has been a major driver in lawful interception standards not only for Europe, but worldwide.
ETSI Compliance
Almost all countries impose some form of lawful interception requirements on their
Communication Service Providers (CSPs).
This category is a broad term but more specifically, it is used to describe the
following entities who are obliged by law to provide interception services:
1. Service providers (SvP)
2. Network operators (NWO)
3. Access providers (AP)
LEA Specifics
Although the standards described by ETSI are quite detailed and extensive, some sections
are still subject to national laws which can vary drastically.
One particular issue which we encountered in the past is the LEA side of LI implementation; the software used for intercepted data analysis is not defined by any of the ETSI standards.
This may seem trivial and insignificant at first, but due to national laws, vendors and CSPs
are obliged to comply with LEA requests, whether or not their systems are ETSI compliant.
LEA Specifics
Although the standards described by ETSI are quite detailed and extensive, some sections
are still subject to national laws which can vary drastically.
One particular issue which we encountered in the past is the LEA side of LI implementation; the software used for intercepted data analysis is not defined by any of the ETSI standards.
This may seem trivial and insignificant at first, but due to national laws, vendors and CSPs
are obliged to comply with LEA requests, whether or not their systems are ETSI compliant.
Vendor Locks
The issue mentioned in the previous section is a direct cause of vendors building custom solutions for various LEA – CSP combinations and therefore creating “vendor locks”.
Lawful interception solutions are still unaffordable and present a zero ROI. This situation itself
is a big burden for smaller service providers who are left with only the following options:
1. Purchase resource heavy solution from vendor
2. Risk paying a huge fine or getting their license revoked
Hardware
When it comes to hardware and Lawful interception vendors, the well established procedure is to enforce their own hardware as a mandatory part of LI contract. The lack of access to both LI hardware and software creates an illusion that powerful super computers are needed even for smaller CSPs with couple of thousand users.
We can now form a mental image from all this information, and with a fair amount of certainty come to a conclusion that this type of Vendor-CSP-LEA relationship is best described by using a term “Black Box”.
Why ELEE Solution
ELEE is an ETSI compliant Lawful Interception solution developed from scratch. Our focus
is to support latest ETSI standards, keep up with new technologies, and try to avoid legacy
nightmares.
Wireshark
ELEE Lawful Interception delivers intercepted data in a format described by ETSI, but that is only the final stage of interception process. Internally, we use our own custom “.elee” format which is easy to decode and will be available as a plugin for Wireshark, a well known open source software for packet data analysis.
This could bring us closer in an attempt to create a standard for LI data analysis. Wireshark is a well known tool that has been tested and used for decades; making it compatible with Lawful Interception data would bridge the gap between data interception and data analysis.
The Conclusion
You might be wondering why ELEE Lawful Interception should be considered a viable
solution for any of the Communication Service Providers (CSPs)?
Those that already have systems in place are probably vendor locked and unwilling to do business with new companies. We don’t consider this to be a deal breaker since the majority of CSPs are smaller, and always grasping at any potential leads that could keep their
day-to-day operational cost at minimum.
One of the main goals of this project is to finally define this “minimum”; to become the first
LI vendor with precisely defined prices available online, without any hidden incurred costs.
The Software
Another key benefit of ELEE system is its lack of dependence on third party libraries and tools. We are not re-inventing wheels and making them square, but only keeping the important “cogs” under our control, in-house.
This business model is not unique, but very rare these days when most software is just built on top of legacy products, resulting in high maintenance and tedious upgrade process.
ELEE Lawful Interception is easy to maintain, resource light solution that makes power hungry features running on low power hardware a real possibility.
