This guide does not address legal obligations for the implementation of lawful intercept. As a service
provider, you are responsible to ensure that your network complies with applicable lawful intercept
statutes and regulations. We recommend that you seek legal advice to determine your obligations.

Information About Lawful Intercept

Lawful intercept is a process that enables a Law Enforcement Agency (LEA) to perform electronic
surveillance on an individual (a target) as authorized by a judicial or administrative order. To facilitate
the lawful intercept process, certain legislation and regulations require service providers (SPs) and
Internet service providers (ISPs) to implement their networks to explicitly support authorized electronic
surveillance.

The surveillance is performed through the use of wiretaps on traditional telecommunications and
Internet services in voice, data, and multiservice networks. The LEA delivers a request for a wiretap to
the target’s service provider, who is responsible for intercepting data communication to and from the
individual. The service provider uses the target’s IP address or session ID to determine which of its edge
routers handles the target’s traffic (data communication). The service provider then intercepts the
target’s traffic as it passes through the router, and sends a copy of the intercepted traffic to the LEA
without the target’s knowledge.