IP: Another week, another FBI embarrassment: == Good Morning Silicon Valley Fri Oct 06 12:00:17 EDT 2000

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

>Another week, another FBI embarrassment: Some heavily...edited 
><http://www.epic.org/privacy/carnivore/foia_documents.html>FBI documents, 
>released to the Electronic Privacy Information Centre thanks to 
><http://www.epic.org/privacy/carnivore/foia_pr.html>a Freedom of 
>Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit, reveal that the FBI's Carnivore 
>surveillance technology is capable of monitoring quite a bit more than 
>just e-mail traffic. Of the material released by the FBI, nearly 200 pages 
>were withheld in full. Another 400 pages were redacted, many 
><http://www.epic.org/privacy/carnivore/omnivorecapabilities3.html>completely 
>except for the page numbers. Still, in spite of these efforts at 
>concealment certain contentious details have emerged, among them 
>Carnivore's ability to reconstruct Web pages viewed by a subject, and a 
>planned effort to enable the device to 
><http://www.epic.org/privacy/carnivore/dragonnet.html>capture 
>voice-over-Web communications. These revelations certainly do little to 
>reassure us of the FBI's integrity in this matter. Indeed, it would seem 
>the agency's assertion that it would restrain its use of the technology to 
>a simple review of e-mail headers is at best questionable. Coming as it 
>does in the aftermath of <http://cryptome.org/carnivore-mask.htm>other 
>Justice Department embarrassments, one has to wonder about the 
>truthfullness of the agency's repeated assertions that it's trying to be 
>upfront about Carnivore.