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carnivore: fbi launches email drift net by Nick Mamatas (Laddertrick@gvny.com) - October 18, 2000 |
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| Like a mile-long drift net that snatches up dolphins, corpses and fifty-five gallon drums of toxic waste along with tuna, the FBI's new "data sniffer" equipment, Carnivore, doesn't care whose email it snags and scrutinizes. The FBI demonstrated the technology weeks ago, which can examine millions of email messages in a short period of time, but admitted that it was in use for over a year before being publicly acknowledged." Carnivore is similar to standard email sniffers, which examine messages from specific users or that contain certain keywords, but is far more powerful. The FBI admits that Carnivore (named because it can find the "meat" in data streams) in somewhere between "fewer than 100" and "fewer than 50" (we said they had advanced technology, not that they can count) cases, but the potential for abuse is wide open. Mark Rasch, a former federal computer-crimes prosecutor explained that Carnivore is "the electronic equivalent of listening to everybody's phone calls to see if it's the phone call you should be monitoring." And Carnivore is just the beginning. The technology was showcased in order to encourage the ISP industry to install little black boxes and create a "standard" for email spying. Then, the FBI would be able to examine the billions of packets that make up email and other Internet transmissions all but instantaneously, much the same way a drift net is entirely indiscriminate in what it snags as it floats through the ocean. Currently, Carnivore is wheeled into an ISP when danger (or something else) is afoot and plugged into the ISP's systems. Agents drop by every day or so and extract the data the device is designed to snag, and then they gut all the MAKE.MONEY.FAST and "Have a larger penis in thirty days!" spam to find the tasty, criminal bits. The feds hope to have their drift net fully unfurled, once a standard system for monitoring all digital communications is developed. The NSA has been monitoring international email, fax transmissions and telephone calls for years with its Echelon program, but felt the need to keep its program secret. The fact that the FBI is so public with the Carnivore technology shows how quickly the ideological worm can turn. The Internet has reached a critical mass of users who want the mall on their television; but will the public hand over its privacy to make sure their neighbors can't see thirty year-old photos of men blowing mules? And you can forget about just erasing data as well. The FBI also has a prototype device that can read deleted information on a disk. Data isn't so much deleted as it is subtly changed so that the computer can no longer find it. Deep in the medium of a disk, your deleted nudie photos and the first draft of that Star Trek fan fiction about Worf's larger penis making money fast still exist. The FBI's new magneto-resistive microscope can examine the remaining magnetic fields on an "erased" disk and recreate the data. Some private firms offer this service for toasted disks, but the ease with which the feds can snag disks from the trash or even seize computer equipment, and then peer into the past with their microscope, is reportedly making the eggheads down at Quantico giddy. Not every idea is a good one. Coincidentally released the same day as the Carnivore drift net and the magic microscope, is this bit of news: Gary Settles of the Penn State Research Foundation has been awarded the patent for a device that can detect trace amounts of chemicals that surround us all like a cloud. With it, Settles claims that we will be able to detect drugs and explosives on a person as easily as airport metal detectors can detect car keys and belt buckles. Luckily, a working device is not one of the perquisites for being awarded a patent. Nor is it a device that even makes any sense. |
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The Digital Threat: United States National Security & Computers Chemical Trace Detection Portal Based On The Natural Airflow & Heat Transfer Of The Human Body The FBI Wants To Read Your Email Understanding Data Loss The Growth & Development Of Cyberspace Law In The United States: Highlights Of The Past Decade It's Time For Carnivore Spin 'Carnivore' Eats Your Privacy ACLU: Law Needs 'Carnivore' Fix Telecoms Miffed At FBI Meddling U.S. To Track Crypto Trails Know The Code: ACLU Seeks FBI Computer Code On 'Carnivore' FBI System Covertly Searches E-mail Who's On First Steve Jackson Games v United States Secret Service SJ Games v The Secret Service Electronic Privacy Information Center Committee On The Judiciary: Corn-Reverse Statement American Civil Liberties Union Disinformation Dossier On The Military-Nintendo Complex Disinformation Dossier On Project ECHELON Disinformation Dossier On Who Is Attacking The World Wide Web? Disinformation Dossier On Information Wants To Be Sold Disinformation Dossier On National I.D. Cards |
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