Successful Plugtest of ETSI's lawful interception specifications
Tuesday 18 April 2006
From 6 until 10 March 2006, an interoperability event for lawful interception standards was held in France. Pine Digital Security was appointed as coordinator of this event by the ETSI Technical Committee on Lawful Interception (TCLI). During the so called plugtest of 5 days, the ETSI lawful interception specifications for handover of IP- and e-mail traffic (TS 102 232, 102 233 and 102 234) were tested. Nine manufacturers of both interception and monitoring facility equipment, bringing a total of 31 participants, came together in Sophia Antipolis with working implementations of the ETSI LI specifications. Already before the event, several suggestions for improvements in the specifications and the related ASN.1 were discussed on the mailing list by participants. During the event, daily wrap up meetings were held to discuss the testing progress and to brainstorm about further possible improvements to the specifications. This resulted in no less than 12 change requests to the current versions of the specifications. These CRs will be submitted as input to the next TC LI plenary meeting, held at Cyprus in May 2006. If agreed upon, new versions of the specifications including the changes will be published after this meeting.
On a rate from 1 to 5, the event was rated a 4,5. The organization was rated a 4,8. 85% of the participants stated that there is still a need for LI plugtests in the future, and 75% showed interest to test the upcoming specification for handover of intercepted IP multimedia (VOIP). More information can be found at the ETSI Plugtests site.