ARTS & FARCES internet

Technical flaws in the FBI’s Carnivore Internet surveillance system have reportedly hampered surveillance of Usama bin Laden, according to an internal bureau memo released last week by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC).

Upon receipt of a court order, the FBI is permitted to install the Carnivore system on an Internet Service Provider (ISP) network for the purposes of surveilling the target named in the court order. Carnivore is controversial because it monitors all Internet traffic that passes through that ISP network, not just traffic related to the target of the investigation.

EPIC has filed a series of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to obtain information about Carnivore from the FBI. On 24 May 2002, EPIC obtained a number of documents subject to its FOIA requests.

One of the documents EPIC received was an internal FBI email, dated 5 April 2000 and sent to the bureau’s Associate General Counsel for National Security Affairs, M.E. “Spike” Bowman. Although the sender of the email was redacted, the document indicated that the Carnivore software failed to work properly and that the technician who installed it became so upset that he destroyed the harvested email, including the email on the subject of the investigation.

The email concludes by pointing out that a “pattern of occurrences” exists with regard to Carnivore failures.

Two associated documents related to the Bowman email indicate that the Carnivore system is much more promiscuous in its collection of email and other Internet traffic unrelated to the subject of an investigation. In these documents, members of the FBI acknowledge that Carnivore has a tendency to cause “the improper capture of data” and that “such unauthorized interceptions not only can violate a citizen’s privacy but also can seriously ‘contaminate’ ongoing investigations.”

Publicly, the FBI has repeatedly downplayed the Carnivore system’s potential to collect private communications by parties who are not subjects of an authorized investigation. An independent review of the Carnivore system, commissioned by the Justice Department, recommended that technical changes be made to the Carnivore system in order to limit the privacy invasions of the citizenry. Neither the Justice Department nor the FBI have indicated whether the recommended changes have been implemented.

In a media release, EPIC’s General Counsel—David Sobel—painted the obvious picture:

“These documents confirm what many of us have believed for two years—Carnivore is a powerful but clumsy tool that endangers the privacy of innocent American citizens. We have now learned that its imprecision can also jeopardize important investigations, including those involving terrorism. As we suggested when it first became public, Carnivore’s use should be suspended until the questions surrounding it can finally be resolved. Our FOIA lawsuit shows that there’s a great deal about Carnivore that we still don’t know.”