IP: more on EARTHLINK SAYS IT WON'T INSTALL DEVICE FOR FBI: Edupage, 14 July 2000

[Dave Farber <farber@cis.upenn.edu>]

>From: Joe McGuckin <joe@via.net>
>Date: Sat, 15 Jul 2000 17:26:18 -0700 (PDT)
>To: farber@cis.upenn.edu
>
>This begs the question: How many national ISP's *have* installed
>Carnivore and haven't publically disclosed the fact?
>
>Apparently Earthlink didn't willingly agree to install Carnivore, the
>SF Examiner mentioned that Earthlink lost a federal court case
>and then subsequently tried to install Carnivore.
>
>The SF Examiner mentioned that there was an operating system incompatability
>with the Carnivore software. So now I'm wondering - Is Carnivore a software
>package that get's installed on your mail servers? Or is it a box that
>snoops SNMP traffic when placed on the same subnet as your mail servers ?
>(If so, this would seem to indicate that you can't use ethernet switches to
>connect key ISP infrastructure equipment together, reducing the security
>level and reliability of key services like email and netnews. A large step
>backwards.)
>
>Are ISP's going to be forced to use an OS of the FBI's choosing to facilitate
>the governments surveillance goals? I for one, sincerely hope they do not
>choose NT or Win2K!
>
>Joe
>
>
>
>--
>
>Joe McGuckin
>
>ViaNet Communications
>994 San Antonio Road
>Palo Alto, CA  94303
>
>Phone: 650-969-2203
>Cell:  650-207-0372
>Fax:   650-969-2124