| Topic: |
Politics > Politics-USA |
| User: |
"Ms Liberty" |
| Date: |
29 Jan 2006 12:17:06 AM |
| Object: |
The FBI's Carnivore |
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnivore_%28FBI%29
Carnivore is a name given to a system implemented by the Federal
Bureau of Investigation that is analogous to wiretapping except
in this case it is email that is being tapped instead of
telephone conversations. It is a form of policeware.
U.S. Government officials will confirm or deny little about the
physical or logical workings of Carnivore, but there are some
basic facts that are generally agreed upon:
In order to be affected, a computer must be temporarily connected
to a computer physically installed at an internet service
provider (ISP) or other location where it can "sniff" traffic on
a LAN segment to look for email messages in transit. The
technology itself is nothing really special — using a standard
packet sniffer and some fairly straightforward filtering (such as
a Perl script), one could easily duplicate this functionality.
Getting the cooperation of the ISPs or the owner of the LAN onto
which Carnivore is to be placed can either be voluntary, illegal,
or by court order; however, once a system is in place it is
allegedly not allowed to simply capture every email that passes
through the system — by existing U.S. law publicly acknowledged
USG personnel are required to get a warrant or court order naming
specific people or email addresses that may be monitored. Some
sovereign U.S. citizens and others around the world are concerned
that this requirement is sometimes or routinely secretly ignored,
effectively moving the United States of America dangerously
towards the cultural standards of a police state or totalitarian
military dictatorship. When an email passes through that matches
the filtering criteria mandated by the warrant, the message is
logged along with information on the date, time, origin and
destination. This logging is most likely relayed in real time to
the FBI but the details are not currently known. All other
traffic would presumably be dropped without logging or capture.
There is much speculation and concern regarding the
implementation, usage, and possible abuses of Carnivore. Free
speech advocates and others interested in civil rights are
concerned over the potential for misuse.
Assistant FBI Director Donald Kerr has been quoted as saying:
The Carnivore device works much like commercial "sniffers"
and other network diagnostic tools used by ISPs every day, except
that it provides the FBI with a unique ability to distinguish
between communications which may be lawfully intercepted and
those which may not. For example, if a court order provides for
the lawful interception of one type of communication (e.g., e-
mail), but excludes all other communications (e.g., online
shopping) the Carnivore tool can be configured to intercept only
those e-mails being transmitted either to or from the named
subject. ...is a very specialized network analyzer or "sniffer"
which runs as an application program on a normal personal
computer under the Microsoft Windows operating system. It works
by "sniffing" the proper portions of network packets and copying
and storing only those packets which match a finely defined
filter set programmed in conformity with the court order. This
filter set can be extremely complex, and this provides the FBI
with an ability to collect transmissions which comply with pen
register court orders, trap & trace court orders, Title III
interception orders, etc.... ...It is important to distinguish
now what is meant by "sniffing." The problem of discriminating
between users' messages on the Internet is a complex one.
However, this is exactly what Carnivore does. It does NOT search
through the contents of every message and collect those that
contain certain key words like "bomb" or "drugs." It selects
messages based on criteria expressly set out in the court order,
for example, messages transmitted to or from a particular account
or to or from a particular user.cryptome.org
After prolonged negative coverage in the press, the FBI changed
the name of its system from "Carnivore" to the more benign-
sounding "DCS1000." DCS is reported to stand for "Digital
Collection System"; the system has the same functions as before.
It has been reported, [1] as of the middle of January 2005, that
the FBI has essentially abandoned the use of Carnivore in favor
of commercially available software.
--
Ms Liberty - United States of America
50% of U.S. households own a gun but few people ever practice
with them. Your gun is not a lucky rabbit's foot that will bestow
protection on you, just by keeping it around. If you own one, you
have a moral obligation to yourself to learn safety, get training
and learn how to use it, then stay in practice so you don't
forget and get rusty. Take as much training as you can afford and
practice regularly. After all, you are the militia.
.
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