The companies are due to announce Tuesday that Narus Inc.'s NarusInsight Intercept Suite for carriers has been fully tested for interoperability with Pen-Link Ltd.'s Lincoln 2 data collection and reporting software for law enforcement.

Security agencies around the world, which need to execute wiretapping, are trying to come to grips with the transition made by carrier networks from circuit-switched phone calls to IP packet data services. With new laws requiring carriers to hand over information about their subscribers' e-mail and Web surfing records, carriers and legal agencies now need new tools that work with each other.

In August 2004, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission ruled that interconnected VoIP (voice over IP) service providers will have to allow law enforcement wiretapping under CALEA (Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act) by May 14, 2007. A federal court upheld that ruling on Friday.

A set of rules from ETSI (the European Telecommunications Standards Institute) that cover interception and analysis of e-mail and other IP communications is now being phased in across Europe and adopted in some Asian countries. ETSI is not operating under any laws on VoIP wiretapping, however.

The software that a carrier uses to intercept communications has to match up with the tools used by the law-enforcement agency that wants to collect and interpret the data, Narus officials said.

The Narus and Pen-Link products are the first to comply with both the ETSI rules and the VOIP CALEA regulations as well as U.S. laws on collecting e-mail and Web data, the companies claim. Specifically, they fully comply with the CALEA T1.678 standard and the ETSI TS 102 232/233/234 standards.

The software is intended for probes, with warrants, of specific users' traffic during specific periods.

Even as service providers and law enforcement agencies grapple with the task of implementing a new era of intercept laws and technologies, enterprises and other users in turn are beginning to face questions as to what information is being accessed and how it is being used by government agencies.