Ads by TechWords

See your link here
Receive the latest technology news and information.
Security
Computerworld Daily News (First Look and Wrap-Up)
Computerworld Blogs Newsletter
The Weekly Top 10
Cloud Computing
View all newsletters




Privacy Policy
 

FBI documents expose Carnivore glitch in bin Laden probe

May 29, 2002 12:00 PM ET

IDG News Service - A technical glitch in the FBI system for tapping e-mail hampered an investigation apparently linked to Osama bin Laden and raises privacy concerns, a privacy watchdog group said yesterday.
The Carnivore system was supposed to capture e-mail from the target of the investigation, but it also saved messages from other individuals, according to an FBI memo made public by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) in Washington, which obtained the memo under the Freedom of Information Act.
"The software was turned on and did not work correctly," the memo, dated April 5, 2000, said. An "FBI technical person was apparently so upset that he destroyed all" saved e-mail messages, including the ones related to the investigation, according to the memo.
The e-mail tap was being used by the FBI's International Terrorism Operations Section UBL unit; according to EPIC, "UBL" refers to Osama bin Laden, who is often referred to in government documents as "Usama."
The FBI, in other now-public documents written the following week, said that e-mail surveillance with Carnivore could lead to "improper capture of data" and that "unauthorized interceptions not only can violate a citizen's privacy, but also can seriously 'contaminate' ongoing investigations."
The Carnivore e-mail surveillance tool, announced to the public two years ago and officially called DCS1000, works by capturing data packets that pass through the systems of an Internet service provider. To do this, a box with the Carnivore software is installed on the service provider's network.
Civil libertarians have criticized the system.
EPIC described the FBI documents as evidence that Carnivore is "a powerful but clumsy tool that endangers the privacy" of citizens. In a statement, EPIC called for use of the system to be suspended "until the questions surrounding it can finally be resolved."
Nobody at the FBI was immediately available for comment. However, an anonymous bureau official quoted in the online edition of The New York Times said that in this particular case, Carnivore gathered too much information because it was not set up correctly and that the e-mail messages that the memo said had been deleted were recovered.


Reprinted with permission from

IDG.net
Story copyright 2009 International Data Group. All rights reserved.

Jump to comments

Privacy

Additional Resources

WHITE PAPER
Approximately 60 percent of data migration projects overrun time or budget, while some fail completely. Download this white paper, "Enhancing Your Chance for Successful Data Migration," to learn the critical steps you need to take to execute a data migration project with minimum cost and risk to your business.
WHITE PAPER
Read the Gartner research note to learn why the TCO of a server-based computing deployment used to deliver all applications to users is around 50% lower than that of an unmanaged desktop deployment.
WHITE PAPER
Economic downturns have a tendency to accelerate emerging technologies, boost the adoption of effective solutions, and punish solutions that are not cost competitive or that are out of synch with industry trends. This IDC White Paper presents the results of an IDC survey of 330 companies in Western Europe, Asia/Pacific and the Americas that measures the receptiveness to Linux and takes into consideration changing views driven by the disruptive economic environment that businesses face today.