Congress probes FBI's use of e-mail monitoring system
By The Associated Press
07.25.00
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WASHINGTON — Lawmakers of both parties grilled FBI officials
yesterday over the bureau's use of "Carnivore," a device designed to monitor
and capture e-mail messages in a criminal investigation.
The FBI calls Carnivore a "reasonable balance" between privacy and law
enforcement in an age where crime has gone online. But some First Amendment
advocates fear the system might chill free speech.
"Certainly the FBI wants to use this as a valuable tool for catching
criminals, but the fact remains that this valuable tool could be misused to
stifle political speech," said Paul McMasters, First Amendment ombudsman for
The Freedom Forum, in response to yesterday's hearings. "And that is not too
far-fetched when people remember back to the Church Committee where wiretaps
were (found to have been) used (illegally by the CIA) to monitor political
dissent."
Rep. Charles Canady, R-Fla., called yesterday's hearings amid concerns
from privacy groups and civil libertarians.
"Carnivore raises the question as to whether existing statutes
protecting citizens from 'unreasonable searches and seizures' under the Fourth
Amendment appropriately balance the concerns of law enforcement and privacy,"
said Canady, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee's Constitution panel.
"There seems to me to be a growing level of generalized concern about
Big Brotherism that I suspect is being fed by the increasing electronic world,"
said Rep. Melvin L. Watt, D-N.C.
FBI officials defended Carnivore and the bureau's use of the tool to
Canady's panel, saying it is used only with proper legal authorization —
in many cases coming from both a senior Justice Department official and a
judge.
The FBI likened Carnivore to a traditional telephone tap, saying both
need probable cause to be undertaken.
Carnivore is the term used for the entire system, a computer running
the Microsoft Windows NT operating system and software that scans and captures
packets, the standard unit of Internet traffic, as they travel through an
Internet service provider's network. The FBI can install a Carnivore unit at an
ISP's network station and configure it to capture only e-mail going to or from
the person under investigation.
FBI officials say Carnivore has been used 25 times, including 16 times
this year. None of those cases has yet gone to trial, so the FBI would not
disclose detailed information about them.
Donald M. Kerr, director of the FBI's laboratory division, says
Carnivore searches only the sender and recipient lines of e-mail, not the
subject line, as was previously reported. It does not search through the
message content for keywords, nor does it monitor Web browsing — except
for Web-based e-mail — or Instant Messaging, just e-mail traffic,
authorities said.
Privacy advocates and some lawmakers voiced concern that only the FBI
truly knows what Carnivore does, since after it is installed it is neither
supervised nor checked by an ISP's technicians; there isn't even a mouse or
keyboard attached for someone to access the machine.
"When you see some things that have happened here in Washington, it
gives one reason to worry," said Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry J. Hyde,
R-Ill.
To find out, the American Civil Liberties Union
filed a Freedom of Information Act
request last week for Carnivore's source code, the inner workings of how
the device functions.
The FBI gave a preview of its objections to the FOIA request,
explaining why the bureau wouldn't want Carnivore's innermost details to be
public.
"We would have a problem with full open disclosure, because that, in
fact, would allow anyone who chose to develop techniques to spoof what we do an
easy opportunity to figure out how to do that," Kerr said.
FBI officials reiterated an earlier plan to show an independent panel
of academic and industry experts exactly how Carnivore works, and opened the
door to regular checks.
Deputy Associate Attorney General Kevin V. DiGregory said that for a
"rogue FBI agent" to circumvent the law, "he would need to engage the aid of
technical people, perhaps even technical people at the Internet service
provider, and he would also have to find some way to cover up or change the
audit trail that is left by the system so that it doesn't expose his going
beyond the court order."
Legislators seemed unconvinced.
"I don't know if we have any way of verifying that the technological
part of the response to my question that you've given me, and I know that
unfortunately in the past, we've had many agencies, including law enforcement,
that have gone beyond the scope of their responsibility," said Rep. John
Conyers, D-Mich., the Judiciary Committee's top Democrat. "There's hardly
anything new about that."
Updates
Privacy experts worry about breadth of FBI's Internet surveillance tool
Group says agency documents reveal Carnivore can capture all communications going through an Internet service — not just e-mail.
11.20.00
Privacy group to judge: Release details of FBI's e-mail surveillance system
Bureau has not responded fast enough to Freedom of Information Act request, Electronic Privacy Information Center tells federal court.
08.02.00
Related
How technology may temper our desire to speak freely
Commentary Jon Katz: As privacy is increasingly invaded, our willingness to share our thoughts and ideas may face profound challenges.
07.21.00
