Partner content: The SS8 platform is designed to enforce and operate within legal guidelines to maximize the availability and value of intelligence while preserving civil protections to privacy
As with the broader missions of the law enforcement and intelligence communities, lawful intelligence must balance investigative rigor with the need to preserve privacy and other civil protections. Legal frameworks to regulate the collection and use of investigative information are well developed all over the world, and they are a critical protection for civil liberties.
SS8 is committed to advancing technological capabilities for lawful intelligence that both maximize visibility of subjects and promote scrupulous adherence to those legal frameworks. SS8 upholds its commitment to legal integrity through stringent transparency, fostering both accountability and auditability. The SS8 platform is designed from the ground up to enforce and operate within legal guidelines to maximize the availability and value of intelligence while preserving civil protections to privacy.
Ethical platform design to promote lawfulness
The SS8 platform is built from the ground up to control access to the sensitive information it contains. Its core workflows enforce legal practices such as applying sophisticated automated warrant management to ensure that data collection is governed by proper lawful authorization such as a warrant or subpoena. Access controls provide every user with only the minimum rights to information that they need to perform their job functions, and the visibility of information can be controlled at a very granular level.
User accounts are associated with individuals rather than generic roles, to enhance accountability for actions taken on the system. That degree of control helps preserve privacy as well as protect the integrity of investigations, including minimizing potential impacts from unauthorized access. In addition, all user actions—including passive views as well as changes to the system—are logged with a timestamp, user ID, and IP address, associating them with the specific person responsible.
Those logs provide an audit trail (not accessible to general users) that lets auditors trace the activities of individual users or the operational details associated with a specific warrant. That level of transparency and accountability is critical to enforcing the legal mandates associated with lawful intelligence. The SS8 platform adheres to 3GPP, ETSI, and other international telecom standards, with the flexibility to adapt to individual implementations as well as the legal requirements of local jurisdictions.
Gathering intelligence to advance legal processes
In addition to controlling access to sensitive and restricted lawful intelligence information, the SS8 platform advances investigations to meet the requirements of those controls. In the case of a terrorist event without a pool of suspects, for example, investigators must cast a wide net to gather information without violating legal and ethical privacy concerns.
Here, it would generally be inappropriate to provision intercept targets, and there would typically be insufficient evidence to gain a warrant to do so. A common approach would be to subpoena location records from mobile network operators in a specified timespan, to identify subjects within the geofenced area where the event occurred. That preliminary information can provide connections and insights, such as showing a group of apparent attackers forming a perimeter and then converging on a victim or area.
Armed with that evidence, investigators can pursue the next level of detail, such as identifying subjects of interest and seeking search warrants to establish their associations, behaviors, and patterns of life. Developing those paths of inquiry expands the pool of subjects of interest and increases the depth of intelligence about individuals without unduly compromising their privacy. That motion is primary to the goal of bringing investigative rigor together with the need to preserve civil protections.
Preserving privacy as a core provision
In addition to judicial controls in the form of authorizations such as warrants and subpoenas, regulatory and legislative oversight are vital. As technology evolves—including with the growing capabilities of AI—the process of maintaining equilibrium between enforcement requirements and civil liberties must adapt. Continual review must gauge the impacts of emerging capabilities, to improve investigative reach while maintaining legal and ethical standards.
SS8 advances this goal with powerful but flexible controls over how information is collected and distributed. The platform employs robust measures to limit the scope of information collected to what is authorized, protecting the admissibility of evidence and preventing unauthorized interception that could derail a prosecution. Particularly in the case of larger, more comprehensive warrants, collected information can be partitioned so that a subset of data is anonymized or obfuscated.
In the example of collection of location data in a geofenced area, individuals might be associated with anonymous identifiers, so their behavior can be observed without revealing their identities. In that scenario, additional court orders could authorize that additional level of detail to be revealed to investigators, but only if standards are met for doing so. The SS8 platform governs that access to ensure adherence to ethical and legal guidelines, giving investigators all the information they need to administer justice while protecting society.
About the authors
Dr. Cemal Dikmen
As SS8’s Chief Technology & Security Officer, Cemal plays an integral role in the company’s strategic direction, development, and future growth. A renowned expert and thought leader in the legal compliance and communications analysis domain, he has been a frequent speaker at various industry conferences over the past 10 years. Cemal holds BS, MS, and PhD degrees in Electrical Engineering. You can learn more about Cemal on his LinkedIn profile by clicking here.
Syed Hussain
Syed has spent more than 20 years working in the telecommunication and cyber security industry in Engineering and Product Management leadership roles. He brings significant technical expertise to his role as VP of Product Management for SS8’s Lawful Intelligence products, covering Service Providers and Law Enforcement market domains. He has led architecture and design of 4G and 5G Lawful Interception solutions in Cloud and non-cloud environments. Syed represents SS8 in both ETSI and 3GPP standards bodies and at technology summits and holds a BS in Computer Science and Engineering. You can learn more about Syed on his LinkedIn profile here.
