IP: FBI using high-tech gadgets: InfoBeat News - Morning Coffee Edition - 7/30/2001

[David Farber <dave@farber.net>]

>*** FBI using high-tech gadgets
>
>WASHINGTON (AP) - By bugging a keyboard or using special software,
>FBI agents can remotely capture a computer user's every keystroke.
>With a black box, they can intercept e-mail from miles away. In a
>van parked outside, they secretly can recreate the pictures on a
>computer screen from its electromagnetic energy. The legal limits
>for these new investigative tools will get a test Monday when a
>federal court in New Jersey examines a mob case in which agents,
>without a wiretap order, recorded a suspect's computer keystrokes.
>Privacy experts are watching the case of Nicodemo S. Scarfo Jr. with
>great interest because it could bring major changes to investigative
>tactics in the online age. "It's the idea of secret government
>surveillance technology being installed with very little oversight
>or accountability," David Sobel of the Washington-based Electronic
>Privacy Information Center said. "It gets about as close to the
>common perception of Big Brother as anything I could really
>imagine." Armed only with a search warrant, the FBI broke into
>Scarfo's business and put either a program on his computer or an
>electronic bug in his keyboard - officials will not say which - and
>recorded everything typed by the son of the jailed former boss of
>the Philadelphia mob.
>
>Full article at: http://www.infobeat.com/fullArticle?article=410564742



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