huridocs-tech Re: ACLU letter opposing FBI Carnivore surveillance system

 From Wired News, available online at:
http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,37590,00.html

It's Time for Carnivore Spin
by Declan McCullagh

5:20 p.m. Jul. 14, 2000 PDT

WASHINGTON -- FBI agents are quietly visiting Capitol Hill to deflect
criticism of the agency's Carnivore surveillance system.

On Friday morning, FBI representatives briefed aides from the House of
Representatives on the technical details of Carnivore, a Windows 2000
computer that uses custom software to eavesdrop on people who are the
target of an investigation.

Although Attorney General Janet Reno ordered an investigation on
Thursday, privacy groups are irate, and a congressional oversight
hearing is scheduled, it turns out that Carnivore is fairly
straightforward.

"It plugs into a hub in passive listening mode. All the traffic in the
hub goes through this thing," says an aide who attended the
closed-door briefing. "As (communications) comes in, the (software)
looks through the traffic and if it looks like the filter criteria, it
goes to a Jaz drive."

The FBI agent conducting the investigation logs into the Carnivore box
not through the Internet, but via a modem hooked up to a standard
phone line, said the source, who asked not to be identified.

"This is something that's not being used very widely -- in only about
a half-dozen cases," an FBI spokesman said, adding that he was "not at
liberty" to disclose where Carnivore had been installed.

On Friday, EarthLink said that the FBI agreed not to use Carnivore
again over its network. The system had reportedly disrupted service
for some subscribers in the past.

Wired News contacted more than 15 Internet providers on Friday, but
not one would confirm that the FBI had ever installed a Carnivore
system in their networks.

AOL, AT&T WorldNet, Excite, Bell Atlantic, and MCI WorldCom refused to
comment on either past or current installations of Carnivore.
Typically, the government request for a wiretap includes a provision
instructing the company not to talk about it.

Many smaller Internet service providers said they were not using
Carnivore and that they had not been contacted by the FBI, with some
adding that privacy concerns of their customers would be paramount.

"As far as I know we're not using it. We've never been contacted by
the FBI regarding it," a spokesman for Concentric Networks said. "If
we were, I suppose we would have some serious issues regarding how it
would affect the privacy of our customers."

A spokesman for Universal Broadband said: "It's our policy not to
subscribe to such requests by the federal government unless they can
put a valid subpoena in front of us."

Onemain.com would only say that Carnivore "is not an issue for us. We
abide by the FBI's wiretapping laws and procedures."

Also on Friday, Representative Charles Canady (R-Florida) said that
the House Judiciary Constitution Subcommittee will hold a hearing on
Carnivore on July 24.

And the American Civil Liberties Union filed a freedom of information
request with the FBI on Friday. It asks for all "letters,
correspondence, tape recordings, notes, data, memoranda, email,
computer source and object code, technical manuals, (and) technical
specifications" related to Carnivore.

The ACLU said the request for source code -- perhaps the first of its
kind -- is necessary to understand how the software works and if it
infringes on privacy rights. The FBI, which has 20 business days to
reply, has indicated it views the Carnivore source as confidential.

Nicholas Morehead contributed to this report.


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