CALEA stands for the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act. The original act was passed in 1994 in response to a request for help from law enforcement. It requires providers of commercial voice services to engineer their networks in such a way as to assist law enforcement agencies in executing wiretap orders.
For more information on CALEA, visit the Educause site here.
Every year, the courts are required to report how many wiretap orders they have issued. The figures for 2004 are 1,714 for all local, state, and federal courts and an additional 1,754 under Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA)courts (national security). In an informal survey of 700 campuses, there were no reports of wiretap orders being served in 2003. Law enforcement reports that there were "a few" served on campuses under FISA. By any account, the number of wiretap orders on campuses is extremely small. For more information on the number of wiretaps reported by U.S. courts, go to http://www.uscourts.gov/wiretap04/Table4-04.pdf. For the FISA court, go to http://www.epic.org/privacy/wiretap/stats/fisa_stats.html.