It would be interesting to find out what else Carnivore does. Once they
find that jiucy bit of email - do they then watch you surf - or IRC ???
Joe Baptista
http://www.dot.god/
dot.GOD Hostmaster
+1 (805) 753-8697
On Wed, 12 Jul 2000, Newsbot wrote:
> WASHINGTON (AP) -- Civil liberties and privacy groups are railing against
> a new system designed to allow law enforcement agents to intercept and
> analyze huge amounts of e-mail in connection with an investigation.
>
> The system, called ``Carnivore,'' was first hinted at on April 6 in
> testimony to a House subcommittee. Now the FBI has it in use.
>
> When Carnivore is placed at an Internet service provider, it scans all
> incoming and outgoing e-mails for messages associated with the target of a
> criminal probe.
>
> In a letter addressed to two members of the House subcommittee that deals
> with Fourth Amendment search-and-seizure issues, the American Civil
> Liberties Union argued that the system breaches the Internet provider's
> rights and the rights of all its customers by reading both sender and
> recipient addresses, as well as subject lines of e-mails, to decide
> whether to make a copy of the entire message.
>
> Further, while the system is plugged into the Internet provider's systems,
> it is controlled solely by the law enforcement agency. In a traditional
> wiretap, the tap is physically placed and maintained by the telephone
> company.
>
> ``Carnivore is roughly equivalent to a wiretap capable of accessing the
> contents of the conversations of all of the phone company's customers,
> with the 'assurance' that the FBI will record only conversations of the
> specified target,'' read the letter. ``This 'trust us, we are the
> government' approach is the antithesis of the procedures required under
> our wiretapping laws.''
>
> Barry Steinhardt, associate director of the ACLU, said citizens shouldn't
> trust that such a sweeping data-tap will only be used against criminal
> suspects. And even then, he said, the data mined by Carnivore,
> particularly subject lines, are already intrusive.
>
> ``Law enforcement should be prohibited from installing any device that
> allows them to intercept communications from persons other than the
> target,'' Steinhardt said in an interview. ``When conducting these kinds
> of investigations, the information should be restricted to only addressing
> information.''
>
> A spokeswoman for Rep. Charles T. Canady, R-Fla., who heads the House
> Judiciary subcommittee on the Constitution, said the congressman had no
> comment on the letter.
>
> In testimony to Canady's subcommittee, Robert Corn-Revere, a lawyer at the
> Hogan & Hartson law firm in Washington, said he represented an Internet
> provider that refused to install the Carnivore system. The provider was
> placed in an ``awkward position,'' Corn-Revere said, because the company
> feared suits from customers unhappy with the government looking into all
> the e-mail.
>
> ``It was acknowledged (by the government) that Carnivore would enable
> remote access to the ISP's network and would be under the exclusive
> control of government agents,'' Corn-Revere said.
>
> Corn-Revere told the committee that current law is insufficient to deal
> with Carnivore's potential and that the Internet provider lost its court
> battle in part because of the Internet's connection to telephone lines,
> and that the law was stretched to cover the Internet as well.
>
> Corn-Revere would not reveal the name of his client, and the client lost
> the case. He said the FBI has been using Carnivore since early this year.
>
> James X. Dempsey, senior staff counsel at the Center for Democracy and
> Technology, said the main problem with Carnivore is its mystery.
>
> ``The FBI is placing a black box inside the computer network of an ISP,''
> Dempsey said. ``Not even the ISP knows exactly what that gizmo is doing.''
>
> But Dempsey said Internet providers contributed to the problem, by saying
> that current technology does not allow the Internet provider to sort out
> exactly what the government is entitled to get under a search warrant. The
> carriers complained that they had to give everything to the FBI.
>
> ``The service providers said they didn't know how to comply with court
> orders,'' Dempsey said. ``By taking that position, they have hurt
> themselves, putting themselves into a box.''
>
> Marcus Thomas, who heads the FBI's cybertechnology section, told the Wall
> Street Journal that the bureau has about 20 Carnivore systems, which are
> PCs with proprietary software. He said Carnivore meets current wiretapping
> laws, but is designed to keep up with the Internet.
>
> ``This is just a specialized sniffer,'' Thomas told the Journal, which
> first reported details about Carnivore.
>
> Encrypted e-mail, done with an e-mail encoding program like PGP, still
> stays in code on Carnivore, and it's up to agents to decode it.
>
> Dempsey has a possible solution to the problem, though one that's probably
> unlikely -- show everyone what it does and how it does it, allowing
> Internet providers to install the software themselves.
>
> ``The FBI should make this gizmo an open-source product,'' he said. ``Then
> the secret is gone.''
>
