Patent Application
20090234845
The present invention relates to methods in a telecommunication system to provide access to data received to a centralized storage medium from interfacing traffic nodes in the system.
Under data preservation schemes, law enforcement authorities have the opportunity to request electronic service providers to retain particular data on a particular person or persons, whereas data retention schemes provide the retention of traffic data on all users of electronic services. At first glance, data preservation seems an attractive policy option: the number of persons on whom data will be retained and processed for law enforcement purposes is drastically reduced under this option, and consequently the associated costs for industry will be negligible. In fact, data preservation is a very useful tool for law enforcement authorities. Undoubtedly, in those cases where a suspect has been identified, or where an investigation into for example an organised crime group or terrorism cell is underway, requests for preservation of traffic data are an indispensable tool to establish the connections between suspect and their contacts and associates. At the same time, the logical limitations of this approach can be easily explained—with only data preservation as a tool, it is impossible for investigators to go back in time. Data preservation is only useful as of the moment when suspects have been identified—data retention is indispensable in many cases to actually identify those suspects. Data preservation by itself is not enough for law enforcement authorities to actually be able to investigate and solve crime and terrorism cases. To respond to this concern, a number of states have adopted, or planned to adopt, national general data retention measures. Compared to data preservation measures, which are targeted at specific users and for specific data, general data retention measures aim at requiring (some or all) operators to retain traffic data on all users so that they can be used for law enforcement purposes when necessary and allowed.
A data gathering system in general is disclosed in the international patent application WO 00/05852. The international patent application discloses collection and integration of software that reside on multiple interconnected platforms to a single centralized storage medium. The increasing need for and use of traffic information and data in telecommunications system has increased the burdens and costs on service providers and law enforcement alike. Monitoring can be used to provide information from users. An Intercept Mediation and Delivery Unit IMDU used for data preservation belong to prior art and is disclosed in current Lawful Interception standards (see 3GPP TS 33.108 and 3GPP TS 33.107 —Release 6). The IMDU comprises a Law Enforcement Monitoring Function LEMF. The LEMF is connected to three Mediation Functions respectively for ADMF, DF2, DF3 i.e. an Administration Function ADMF and two Delivery Functions DF2 and DF3. The Administration Function and the Delivery Function DF2 are each one connected to the LEMF via standardized handover interfaces HI1 and HI2, and connected to an intercept access point via the interfaces X1 and X2. The messages sent from LEMF to ADMF via HI1 and from the ADMF to the network via the X1 interface comprise identities of a target that is to be monitored. The Delivery Function DF2 receives Intercept Related Information IRI from the network via the X2 interface, and DF2 is used to distribute the IRI to relevant Law Enforcement Agencies via the HI2 interface. The DF3 receives Content of Communication, i.e. speech and data and is connected to LEMF via a standardized interface HI3 and to the access point via an interface X3. Commonly the ADMF, DF2 and DF3 are parts of the service provider domain and located distinctly from the LEMF.
An array of different kinds of stored information and data may be the subject of lawful authorities requests, and may require different legal instruments. For example, some basic information may be made publicly available by the subscriber or may be highly intrusive and revealing of personal behaviour subject to privacy expectations. Such subscriber information and traffic data that are produced and transferred along the network during the normal traffic operation of the telecommunications networks, but the access to them by the external government authority is distributed over several different channels that makes it complicate to seek and rebuild the required information. The timely production and analysis of subscriber information and traffic data has become invaluable to service providers and government authorities for an array of needs related to critical infrastructure protection and the extraction of forensic evidence for law enforcement. The increasing need for and use of this information and data has increased the burdens and costs on service providers and law enforcement alike. At the other extreme, other information are not currently preserved by the telecommunication operator network either because not meaningful for billing purposes or because a post-processing is required at operator network premises. In some other cases, part of the information that is subject to order by the government authorities is not even available (e.g., correlation on subscriber basis of the several service identities the user could use). Examples of stored information and traffic data according to prior art is attached at the end of the description part of this application. To be noted is that the attached referenced framework not necessarily is limited to the mentioned cases, i.e. the type of identities provided in the solution are dependent on national options and can be extended by adding new network elements or new identities in existing network elements. An architecture for delivery of stored information from a Service provider to a lawful Enforcement Agency is disclosed in a draft standards ETSI DTR/LI-00020 V0.0.4 (2005-06).
The draft standards doesn't give a solution on how to collect all the required information in the network and how to correlate them. Even if this is not the core of this invention, in this document a detailed network framework with a centralized database is proposed as pre-requisite to the solution of the identified problems.
In synthesis, the identified lacks/problems of the current standards are:
The present invention relates to problem how to control type of information to store in a centralized storage medium. A further problem is that the standards only foresee a simple provisioning method on demand of the stored data, while it could be effective for Lawful Intercept purposes to deliver the retained information as soon as they become available.
The problems are solved by the invention by filtering data received to the centralized storage medium, which filtered data is retained in the storage medium and/or forwarded to a Law enforcement Agency or similar.
The solution to the problems more in detail comprises a method in a telecommunication system to provide access to data received to a centralized storage medium from interfacing traffic nodes in the system. The centralized storage medium is part of a Mediation and Delivery Function which is associated with a Law Enforcement Agency. The method comprises the following steps:
Thus, the object of the invention is to identify data to be accessed for Lawful Intercept purposes. This object and others are achieved by methods, arrangement, systems and articles of manufacture.
An advantage with the invention is that the enhanced system architecture and handover interfaces for data retention functionality lead to added value allowing managing the storage of any information in the network by mean of LI agency configuration.
Another advantage with the invention is that Data Retention and Lawful Intercept convergent architectures lead to:
Further advantages with the invention is that Convergent Data Retention/Lawful Interception solutions will reduce the operations expenses (opex) and enhance overall efficiency and the flexible architecture can be used for fulfilment of any data retention requirements in terms of stored subscriber and traffic information and of their provisioning to agencies (not only query modality, but also push delivery), and furthermore similar interfaces towards the agencies could be used for both Data Retention and Lawful Interception.
The Law Enforcement Monitoring Facility LEMF is handled by a Law Enforcement Agency. The general function of the LEMF is briefly explained in the Description of related art. For the purpose of this invention a new management function ManF and a new Lawful Interception acquisition function LiAF are introduced in the LEMF. A new configuration Function ConF is introduced in the Mediation and Delivery Function MDF. The ConF is associated with the DR-C in the MDF and with the ManF in the LEMF. A new Notification Function NotF in the MDF is introduced. The NotF is associated with the DR-C in the MDF and with the LiAF in LEMF. A new Handover Interface HI is located between the LEMF and the MDF. The purpose of the above new entities will be further explained in the embodiments.
A first embodiment of the invention will now be explained. In this embodiment filtering criteria will be determined by the Law Enforcement Monitoring Facility LEMF and sent to the MDF. Generally, the criteria stem from a search warrant or other authorization from a government or other authorized institution. In this example the criteria are sent from the LEMF but may also be communicated by an intermediary, such as a human operator who receives the command from an authorized source, and then inputs the criteria to the MDF. The filtering criteria specify which data to store and configure in the Data retention Cluster, for example in terms of:
This is an example of a filter from one agency. The system will access certain data if it is requested at least by one agency (i.e. if it matches with the criteria of at least one agency).
The request 11A sent by the agency from the Manage function ManF in LEMF to the Configuration Function ConF may also comprise a desire for retention of data. In that case, data fulfilling stored criterion will not only be forwarded but also stored in a Data Base in the cluster DR-C. If the agency requested “notification only” by a so-called notification request in 11A then only an indication is notified to the LEMF, else a notification including the target related information, i.e. the data matching the filter, is forwarded. It is for example also possible to give access to specified data in the system to users with certain rights (or roles with different enabled functions). Users with these rights (or with a role allowing the functions of) are aloud to set the filtering criteria used to retain information. Other users are aloud to order query of the information. The first could for example be a minister of the Justice (as the filtering criteria for the retained information depend on the national law). The second may be used when accessing to the system by a specified client in the lawful agencies. This check of access rights may take place in the Mediation and Delivery Function upon receiving a configuration request or an acquisition order.
A system that can be used to put the invention into practice is schematically shown in
The invention is not limited to the above described and in the drawings shown embodiments but can be modified within the scope of the enclosed claims. The systems and methods of the present invention may be implemented on any of the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), American National Standards Institute (ANSI) or other standard telecommunication network architecture, consistent with the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), which is a United States law requiring telephone network architectures be designed to enable authorized electronic interception.
The invention is of course not limited to the above described and in the drawings shown embodiments but can be modified within the scope of the enclosed claims.
Examples of stored data elements possible to send from the nodes in the system to the centralized Data retention Cluster:
| Number | Date | Country | Kind |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2006/0115 | Feb 2006 | BE | national |
| 2006/0607 | Dec 2006 | BE | national |
| Filing Document | Filing Date | Country | Kind | 371c Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| PCT/SE2006/000261 | 2/27/2006 | WO | 00 | 12/23/2008 |
