SS8 was founded in 2000 to address a law enforcement gap in evidence gathering. The shift from analog to digital telephony in the 1990s marked a sea change, where tried-and-true wiretapping approaches became obsolete without a viable replacement. Existing methods relied mostly on physical taps into copper lines, authorized by a subpoena or search warrant. Alligator clips applied at junction boxes or phone poles were common tools, together with bugs placed in phone receivers and signals captured from the wire with inductive coil pickups.
In the digital era, analog-focused strategies produced only indecipherable strings of ones and zeroes that left law enforcement in the dark. From that engineering challenge, SS8 arose to redefine the field and extend the cutting edge, advanced technology moving interception to the network core. For 25 years, we have advanced our mission within a governance framework that ensures privacy and prevents misuse. We have expanded from interception to Law Enforcement and are a partner with Intelligence teams to find and route out Criminality.
Communication service providers (CSPs), law enforcement agencies (LEAs), the intelligence community, standards bodies, and many others have been our colleagues and collaborators in this effort. We are at once grateful to them for their past support and commitment to working within this ecosystem to advance the future of interception and intelligence to make society safer.
Click the image to watch our 25th Anniversary video!
CALEA and the SS8 Jump-Start for Digital Interception
Regulatory mandates were insufficient to overcome the technical hurdles to lawful interception in the digital world. From January 1, 1995, the US Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) requires CSPs to provide authorized targeted surveillance on their networks. Similar laws exist in other jurisdictions around the globe.
In CALEA’s early years, the technologies needed to fulfill its mandates had not yet been developed, and many obligations for lawful interception went unfulfilled. Working against inertia and resistance from an industry hesitant to invest in new initiatives without revenue potential, the engineers, who would become SS8, invented and proved in the market digital traffic mediation for lawful interception in 1999, ushering in a new era.
These efforts unfolded against the backdrop of mobile networks replacing fixed wirelines as well as emerging US and European standards to govern consistent, secure, and scalable lawful access, which differed from each other. From its vantage point working with public- and private-sector stakeholders, SS8 has fulfilled and helped drive the development of international standards for lawful interception throughout its history.
Data’s Rise and the Shift from Interception to Intelligence
As digital networks matured, SS8 formed a lasting bridge between regulatory requirements and industry standards. The first provider to interoperate with TDMA and CDMA, SS8 extended interception for voice and SMS traffic. Within a few years, the cost-effectiveness of voice over IP (VoIP) services had created a widespread channel parallel to phone networks that was once again outside the reach of lawful interception.
CALEA was updated in 2004 to extend lawful interception requirements to all internet traffic, including VoIP. SS8 kept pace, pioneering scalable lawful access to IP-based systems including SIP, H.323, and IMS. Our Xcipio mediation platform gained traction as change accelerated, including with the rise of 128-bit encryption. As communication content was obscured, investigators filled the gap with a wider scope of information sources—message metadata, license plate readers, open-source intelligence, and much more.
SS8 signaled the move from simply capturing communications to driving investigations across datasets by coining the term “lawful intelligence” and introducing the Intellego platform in 2015 and the most advanced Intellego XT platform in 2020. As a comprehensive monitoring suite for LEAs and intelligence agencies, the platform provides data fusion, location and analysis, illuminates events, and visualizes insights. Progress continues with the addition of capabilities for 5G networks and beyond, data integration, high-accuracy location intelligence, and AI-driven workflows.
The Emerging Mission of Augmented Intelligence
The range of data types and sources for lawful intelligence grows and evolves with increased prominence of over-the-top communication channels, social media, and online crime. As the datasets available to investigators expand in volume, variety, and velocity, the need for more powerful management and analysis tools intensifies. Alongside those evolutionary changes, AI is a revolutionary force, providing unprecedented ability to aggregate and efficiently interpret datasets.
IoT devices from household appliances to vehicles will provide extensive digital footprints to investigators who are prepared to receive them, and the SS8 platform will break new ground to support them. SS8 engineers are moving aggressively to build out new AI capabilities for lawful intelligence, as a force multiplier for analysts. That development is methodical and circumspect, building guardrails to lead the industry forward while avoiding AI artifacts and errors that can mislead and misdirect.
In particular, we see the strength of AI to augment human analysis rather than to make decisions directly. Emerging capabilities will take mundane activities out of the pipeline and tune it for better insight and decision support. AI will automatically transcribe and translate voice calls to make them more searchable, monitor and interpret incoming feeds, score the confidence of individual data points, and much more. Reflecting on the past and looking forward, SS8 thanks our customers, community, and unparalleled employees for making these 25 years an enormous success that set the stage for an unlimited future of value-driven lawful intelligence.
About Dr. Keith Bhatia
Dr. Keith Bhatia is CEO of SS8, and a Board Member. He is focused on growth, profitability, product development, client service, and strategic acquisitions and combines broad technical and market expertise to advance lawful, location, and data intelligence. Keith has nearly three decades of experience in public and private telecommunications, technology, and IT sectors both domestically and abroad, including as SVP and General Manager at Comtech Telecommunications. He has also held executive roles at Neustar, Movius, ADC, and IP Unity and has an MBA in International Finance and a Doctor of Business Administration in Technology Forecasting. You can learn more about Keith here.
About SS8 Networks
As a leader in Lawful and Location Intelligence, SS8 is committed to making societies safer. Our mission is to extract, analyze, and visualize critical intelligence, providing real-time insights that help save lives. With 25 years of expertise, SS8 is a trusted partner of the world’s largest government agencies and communication providers, consistently remaining at the forefront of innovation.
Intellego® XT monitoring and data analytics portfolio is optimized for Law Enforcement Agencies to capture, analyze, and visualize complex data sets for real-time investigative intelligence.
LocationWise delivers the highest audited network location accuracy worldwide, providing active and passive location intelligence for emergency services, law enforcement, and mobile network operators.
Xcipio® mediation platform meets the demands of lawful intercept in any network type and provides the ability to transcode (convert) between lawful intercept handover versions and standard families.
To learn more, contact us at info@SS8.com.
