Fwd: Carnivore

["Chris Doss" <itschris13@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Gotta love our beneficent government.  BEWARE--from now on, don't use words
like "revolution" in your email, unless you're talking about wheels.

>
>Wall Street Journal - July 11, 2000
>
>FBI's System to Covertly Search E-Mail
>Raises Legal Issues, Privacy Concerns
>
>By NEIL KING JR. and TED BRIDIS
>Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
>
>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.
>
>Issue briefing: Net Privacy
>
>* * *
>
>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," Mr.
>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.
>
>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 Mr. 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. Mr. 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," Mr. 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.

________________________________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com