FBI Carnivore: 'black box' ISP spy

[Anthony Naggs]

>From Wired News (http:\\www.wired.com\):

 'Carnivore' Eats Your Privacy 

  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.

  An FBI spokesman told the paper that the agency typically has about 20
  Carnivore computers on hand to use when conducting Internet monitoring 
  in compliance with court orders. 

  But some critics say the practice of intercepting the network traffic 
  of all users, even for a brief period of time, could run afoul of 
  federal privacy laws and even the U.S. Constitution's prohibition on 
  unreasonable searches and seizure. 

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

  Representative Bob Barr (R-Ga.), a conservative privacy advocate, 
  said, "If there's one word I would use to describe this, it would be 
  'frightening.'" 

  Not all Internet service providers seem to like the idea of a 
  government computer silently recording their network traffic, 
  especially since Carnivore systems are typically kept in locked boxes, 
  and at least one company is challenging the practice in court. 

  The FBI reportedly dubbed the system "Carnivore" because it has the 
  ability to get at the "meat" of interesting or suspicious 
  communications. 

  The FBI says such automated monitoring is necessary to perform 
  surveillance on packet-switched networks, and successfully persuaded 
  Congress in 1994 to require telephone companies to make their digital 
  networks readily snoopable. The bulk of legal wiretaps are used to 
  investigate drug-related crimes, according to annual statistics
  published by the U.S. federal court system. 

  FBI Director Louis Freeh has in the past pressed for limits on what 
  encryption technology Americans may use, and the FBI last year 
  unsuccessfully asked the Internet Engineering Task Force to build 
  support for wiretaps into network protocols. 


                                                                                               


-- 
Anthony Naggs