From: msmith01@flash.net
Subject: SNET: FBI's troubles could imperil its system of e-mail surveillance
Date: 3 Jun 2001 12:46:13 -0400
To: Mark Smith 

->  SNETNEWS  Mailing List

FBI's troubles could imperil its system of e-mail surveillance
By jon Sawyer

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/News/B8E0D40914CCE19E86256A5F00615FD7?OpenDocument



WASHINGTON - The FBI's recent troubles could imperil the e-mail
surveillance system that the agency developed and that critics have
blasted as a threat to individual privacy.

The fate of the surveillance system, called Carnivore, will be addressed
first by Attorney General John Ashcroft. He delayed completion of an
internal review of the program when the FBI was rocked by controversy
over its misplaced documents in the case against Oklahoma City bomber
Timothy McVeigh.

The Carnivore system had been endorsed by former Attorney General Janet
Reno and received a qualified vote of confidence in an outside review
last December by the Illinois Institute of Technology. Ashcroft, a
leader on privacy issues during his term in the Senate, had taken a more
skeptical stance even before the McVeigh disclosures.

If Ashcroft gives the surveillance system his approval, it will
immediately be the focus of scrutiny on Capitol Hill, especially in the
Senate Judiciary Committee. Committee staff members said incoming
Democratic Chairman Patrick Leahy of Vermont would announce Sunday that
he plans hearings on FBI oversight as one of his first agenda items this
summer.

Committee spokesman David Carle said Leahy has concerns not just about
Carnivore and the McVeigh case but also reports of mishandled documents
and resistance to cooperation in connection with the bureau's crime lab,
its handling of the Robert Hanssen spy investigation and its response to
the inquiry by former Sen. John C. Danforth, R-Mo., into the FBI's fatal
1993 raid on the Branch Davidian complex in Waco, Texas.

Carle said Leahy intends to address these "problem areas" because they
"raise concerns about a culture at the FBI that makes it difficult for
the bureau to admit and correct mistakes."

Judiciary Committee staff said the hearings planned for this summer will
also address the proposal by Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., to establish an
independent inspector general for the FBI who would report to the
attorney general and to Congress. The Justice Department's inspector
general now has oversight for the entire department, including the FBI.

Also pending: a raft of proposals aimed at buttressing privacy
protection, among them legislation that would require Internet service
providers to obtain permission in advance before distributing financial,
health or consumption information on individual users. Critics say the
proposals could add tens of billions of dollars in business costs;
supporters say the cost will be much smaller and worth the price in
terms of individual privacy.

Leahy has championed such proposals in the past and is likely to take
the lead again, according to specialists in the field. But they note
that this issue cuts across normal political lines, embracing
conservatives like Ashcroft and Rep. Bob Barr, R-Ga., as well.

"I don't see that much difference between this administration and the
last," said Robert E. Litan, director of economic studies at the
Brookings Institution. Litan cited Bush's surprise decision to let stand
the new rules on protection of medical-records privacy proposed last
December by President Bill Clinton.

"The right wing of the Republican Party is very nervous about privacy,
just as liberal Democrats are," Litan said. "It's one of the only things
these people agree on - that they don't want their names tossed about
without their permission."

For the Bush administration one of the first tests in the privacy
battles will be Ashcroft's call on Carnivore, a software program that
the FBI touts as an essential weapon against Internet crime and that
critics view as an invitation to FBI abuse.

The Carnivore system has been used 30 times so far, the FBI says, each
time pursuant to a court-approved search warrant. The software, when
linked to an Internet Service Provider, lets the FBI scan for e-mail
messages that the target subject has transmitted or received. The bureau
says built-in controls limit the intercepts to addresses only, not the
actual content of e-mail messages, and that FBI technicians work closely
with their counterparts at the ISPs.

The bureau says its only mistake in developing the program was coming up
with a name that makes it sound more threatening than it is.

"The name was really done with pretty innocent intentions," said
spokesman Paul Bressin. He recalled that when the system was under
development in 1999, the daughter of one of the engineers happened to be
studying dinosaurs in school. "Carnivore" was really "just a cutesy way
of picking a name that sticks in the mind," Bressin said. "We obviously
didn't realize that the name itself would get us in more trouble than
the actual capabilities of the system."

As of earlier this year the FBI dropped references to Carnivore and
began calling the system the "DCS1000."

To its critics, the system, whatever its name, is fraught with trouble.

David Sobel, general counsel of the Electronic Privacy Information
Center, said a wayward agent could reconfigure the Carnivore software to
capture e-mail content as well as addresses - not just for the targeted
individual but for anyone who happened to use the same ISP. And because
the software is controlled by the bureau and not the ISP, he added,
there is no outside check on bureau performance.

This is a radically different approach, Sobel said, from the traditional
rules of search warrants and telephone wiretaps.

"If the FBI had a subpoena or warrant for a particular individual's bank
records we would never accept a situation where the bank sits the agent
down at a computer and says 'Look for whatever you want,'" Sobel said.
"Law enforcement has never been given unchecked access to everything and
then trusted to take only what they are authorized to take," he added,
"but that's what happens with Carnivore."

Bressin, the FBI spokesman, said such distrust is unwarranted. "We make
mistakes like everyone else," he said, "but why should an ISP operator
be more trusted than someone in the FBI, a sworn law enforcement officer
who's gone through extensive background checks and who is using a
technology that protects privacy better than anything we've had before?"

The shorthand answer, said Gregory T. Nujeim, chief legislative counsel
for the American Civil Liberties Union, are incidents like Waco, reports
of falsified FBI lab data and, most recently, the FBI interview reports
in the McVeigh case that turned up six years late.

"All these cases have had an impact," Nujeim said. "The FBI's defense of
Carnivore is that they can be trusted to read only the communications
that it's entitled by court order to obtain. The McVeigh case, like the
others before it, raise questions about the extent to which the FBI can
be entrusted with such an extraordinary power."

Nujeim and Sobel were among half a dozen privacy advocates who discussed
Carnivore and other concerns during a closed-door meeting with Ashcroft
on April 19 - the anniversary, as it happened, of McVeigh's 1995 attack
in Oklahoma City and of the FBI siege in Waco two years earlier that
helped trigger his anti-government rage.

Participants in the meeting said that Ashcroft was attentive to the
concerns they raised but did not tip his hand, other than to promise the
appointment of a high-level Justice Department official as liaison for
privacy issues.

Lisa S. Dean, vice president for technology at the conservative-leaning
Free Congress Foundation, was one of those present. She said that in her
view Ashcroft took a stronger line than did former Attorney General
Reno.

"He said very bluntly that he was more than willing to give law
enforcement the tools it needs to fight crime on all levels - but not at
the expense of individual privacy and constitutional rights," Dean said.
"He's been very clear on that and much better than Reno, who basically
stopped with the first part of that sentence."

To privacy advocates the issue is whether Ashcroft will live up to the
staunch position he took as a senator. He helped lead the fight that
resulted in one of FBI Director Louis Freeh's rare defeats - the refusal
by Congress and the Clinton administration to give the FBI "keys" to
unlock encryption systems in computer software.

"Granted, the Internet could be used to commit crimes, and advanced
encryption could disguise such activities," Ashcroft said in an op-ed
piece he wrote for Investors' Business Daily in 1997.

"However, we do not provide the government with phone jacks outside our
homes for unlimited wiretaps," he added. "Why, then, should we grant the
government the Orwellian capability to listen at will and in real time
to our communications across the Web?"


-> To unsubscribe send email to snetnews-unsubscribe@topica.com

==^================================================================
EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?b1ddDh.b1hB2A
Or send an email To: snetnews-unsubscribe@topica.com
This email was sent to: gateway@horus.bticc.net

T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail!
http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register
==^================================================================