Chomsky:

Now who had concerns about censorship and privacy?

Comments,

F. Leon

--------------------

Superfast system called 'Carnivore' searches
e-mails for messages from criminal suspects,
thus raising legal issues, privacy concerns.


FBI system covertly searches e-mail
<http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2601502,00.html>

By Neil King Jr. and Ted Bridis, WSJ Interactive Edition
July 11, 2000 6:01 AM PT


WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation is using a
superfast system called Carnivore to covertly search e-mails for messages
from criminal suspects.

Essentially a personal computer stuffed with specialized software,
Carnivore represents a new twist in the federal government's fight to
sustain its snooping powers in the Internet age. But in employing the
system, which can scan millions of e-mails a second, the FBI has upset
privacy advocates and some in the computer industry. Experts say the
system opens a thicket of unresolved legal issues and privacy concerns.

The FBI developed the Internet wiretapping system at a special agency lab
at Quantico, Va., and dubbed it Carnivore for its ability to get to "the
meat" of what would otherwise be an enormous quantity of data. FBI
technicians unveiled the system to a roomful of astonished industry
specialists here two weeks ago in order to steer efforts to develop
standardized ways of complying with federal wiretaps. Federal
investigators say they have used Carnivore in fewer than 100 criminal
cases since its launch early last year.

Word of the Carnivore system has disturbed many in the Internet industry
because, when deployed, it must be hooked directly into Internet service
providers' computer networks. That would give the government, at least
theoretically, the ability to eavesdrop on all customers' digital
communications, from e-mail to online banking and Web surfing.

The system also troubles some Internet service providers, who are loath to
see outside software plugged into their systems. In many cases, the FBI
keeps the secret Carnivore computer system in a locked cage on the
provider's premises, with agents making daily visits to retrieve the data
captured from the provider's network. But legal challenges to the use of
Carnivore are few, and judges' rulings remain sealed because of the
secretive nature of the investigations.

Internet eavesdropping Internet wiretaps are conducted only under state or
federal judicial order, and occur relatively infrequently. The huge
majority of wiretaps continue to be the traditional telephone variety,
though U.S. officials say the use of Internet eavesdropping is growing as
everyone from drug dealers to potential terrorists begins to conduct
business over the Web.

The FBI defends Carnivore as more precise than Internet wiretap methods
used in the past. The bureau says the system allows investigators to
tailor an intercept operation so they can pluck only the digital traffic
of one person from among the stream of millions of other messages. An
earlier version, aptly code-named Omnivore, could suck in as much as to
six gigabytes of data every hour, but in a less discriminating fashion.

Still, critics contend that Carnivore is open to abuse.

Mark Rasch, a former federal computer-crimes prosecutor, said the nature
of the surveillance by Carnivore raises important privacy questions, since
it analyzes part of every snippet of data traffic that flows past, if only
to determine whether to record it for police.

"It's the electronic equivalent of listening to everybody's phone calls to
see if it's the phone call you should be monitoring," Rasch said. "You
develop a tremendous amount of information."

Others say the technology dramatizes how far the nation's laws are lagging
behind the technological revolution. "This is a clever way to use old
telephone-era statutes to meet new challenges, but clearly there is too
much latitude in the current law," said Stewart Baker, a lawyer
specializing in telecommunications and Internet regulatory matters.

Privacy and security concerns Robert Corn-Revere, of the Hogan & Hartson
law firm here, represented an unidentified Internet service provider in
one of the few legal fights against Carnivore. He said his client worried
that the FBI would have access to all the e-mail traffic on its system,
raising dire privacy and security concerns. A federal magistrate ruled
against the company early this year, leaving it no option but to allow the
FBI access to its system.


"This is an area in desperate need of clarification from Congress," said
Corn-Revere.

"Once the software is applied to the ISP, there's no check on the system,"
said Rep. Bob Barr (R., Ga.), who sits on a House judiciary subcommittee
for constitutional affairs. "If there's one word I would use to describe
this, it would be 'frightening."'

Marcus Thomas, chief of the FBI's Cyber Technology Section at Quantico,
said Carnivore represents the bureau's effort to keep abreast of rapid
changes in Internet communications while still meeting the rigid demands
of federal wiretapping statutes. "This is just a very specialized
sniffer," he said.

He also noted that criminal and civil penalties prohibit the bureau from
placing unauthorized wiretaps, and any information gleaned in those types
of criminal cases would be thrown out of court. Typical Internet wiretaps
last around 45 days, after which the FBI removes the equipment. Thomas
said the bureau usually has as many as 20 Carnivore systems on hand, "just
in case."

FBI experts acknowledge that Carnivore's monitoring can be stymied with
computer data such as e-mail that is scrambled using powerful encryption
technology. Those messages still can be captured, but law officers trying
to read the contents are "at the mercy of how well it was encrypted,"
Thomas said.

Most of the criminal cases where the FBI used Carnivore in the past 18
months focused on what the bureau calls "infrastructure protection," or
the hunt for hackers, though it also was used in counterterrorism and some
drug-trafficking cases.


 ==========================================================================

This posting is provided to the individual members of this group without
permission from the copyright owner for purposes of criticism, comment,
scholarship and research under the "fair use" provisions of the Federal
copyright laws and it may not be distributed further without permission of
the copyright owner.

FLW
 ==========================================================================