cannabisnews.com: FBI’s System To Covertly Search E-Mail 





FBI’s System To Covertly Search E-Mail 
Posted by FoM on July 11, 2000 at 18:35:29 PT
By Neil King Jr. & Ted Bridis, Wall Street Journal
Source: MSNBC
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.     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 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.”     “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.Direct Link To Article:  http://www.msnbc.com/news/431355.asp  Published: July 11, 2000    Copyright © 2000 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.CannabisNews Surveillance Archives:http://cannabisnews.com/news/list/surveillance.shtml
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Comment #8 posted by dddd on July 13, 2000 at 02:05:15 PT
encryption
John and Tom,I will assume that these encryption things are undecipherable by the feds,or anybody...but what about here and now?If they are interested in you,they now know who you are,and what encryption software you use,and if you start sending encrypted messages,they are still going to know where they originated.If you really want to hide from big brother,for whatever reason,,then dont use the internet.........dddd
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Comment #7 posted by zion on July 12, 2000 at 16:07:48 PT
With Liberty and Justice For All
>Yessir, your tax dollars at work, indeed. When a government doesn't have any enemies, it does it's damndest to create them. And when there aren't any external ones...it makes some *internal* ones.> Ain't it great that we won the cold war, and now all live in a safer world? Freedom and liberty have triumphed and we all can breathe a sigh of relief.I'm sure glad we've dismantled those cold war survellance structures and military mindset. Let's all enjoy the peace and continue to encourage the principles of democracy and freedom world wide. This is the golden age of the United States, where we don't have a credible threat to our national sovereignty and are the global champions of liberty!Peace.
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Comment #6 posted by Valencia on July 12, 2000 at 16:04:20 PT
Its obviously an excuse for fascism
Aren't most violent criminals fairly uneducated? Do bankrobbers, murderers and pimps spend a lot of time sending and receiving e-mails? 
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Comment #5 posted by kaptinemo on July 12, 2000 at 13:58:37 PT:
Big Brother's Toys
None of this is new, weve had lots of warnings about privacy encroachments and government meddling online.The Clipper Chip, which they wanted to put in everyone's phone.http://cpsr.org/program/clipper/clipper.htmlThe origin of FBI snooping:http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/cointel.htmECHELON's planetary intelligence gathering role, and it's ability to intercept nearly all analog and digital communications media:http://www.aclu.org/echelonwatch/The National Security Agency, 3x bigger than the CIA, and much more dangerous to American freedoms:http://www.nsa.gov/Yessir, your tax dollars at work, indeed. When a government doesn't have any enemies, it does it's damndest to create them. And when there aren't any external ones...it makes some *internal* ones.
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Comment #4 posted by tom on July 12, 2000 at 07:31:02 PT:
safe email
www.hushmail.comboth you and the person you're sending to need to have hushmail accounts (which are free) but the system is protected with 1024 bit encryption (blowfish cipher) - feds can't touch it.
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Comment #3 posted by John on July 12, 2000 at 02:39:01 PT:
Three letters - PGP
http://www.pgpI.org/Even US governement cannot do anything with it yet.
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Comment #2 posted by dddd on July 11, 2000 at 22:01:39 PT
I knew it
 This recent cookies trouble that the czar and his cronies got busted for,was nothing.It might of even been a fake-out,to make the public think they are under some sort of scrutiny. I am now convinced that there is no way to be anonamous on the internet.They can know anything they want about you..........dddd
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Comment #1 posted by FoM on July 11, 2000 at 20:59:29 PT
Carnivore Eats Your Privacy 
'Carnivore' Eats Your Privacy Wired News Report 10:05 a.m. Jul. 11, 2000 PDT WASHINGTON -- An FBI surveillance system called Carnivore is alarming privacy advocates and some members of Congress. Agents typically install the specialized computer on the networks of Internet providers, where it intercepts all communications and records sent to or from the target of an investigation, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday. Click the link to read the complete article.http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,37503,00.html
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