Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

White House Proposes New Wiretapping Restraints

Posted by jamie on from the we-understand-why-Clinton-is-sensitive-to-wiretaps dept.

CharlieG points out this story at ABCNews.com. The White House wants to make law enforcement jump through the same hoops to intercept e-mail as it currently must to intercept phone calls. CDT approves of the plan. The ACLU is understandably focused on Carnivore (FBI: "trust us") and is "disappointed" that Clinton didn't take the opportunity to put the kibosh on it. I can't tell from the news reports whether the proposed legislation would only affect law enforcement, or whether the private sector would also be held to the same standard.

1 of 6 comments (clear)

  1. Simple Solutions - How stupid are these people? by nezroy · · Score: 3

    When Carnivore is placed at an Internet service provider, it scans all incoming and outgoing e-mails for messages associated with the target of a criminal probe.

    I hope the FBI computer crimes division is just a little smarter than this... if you know who you are going after, you should be able to find out their account id and, consequently, whatever IP they may be using at any given time... as such, you would only have to scan incoming traffic for it's source address, which is no more an invasion of privacy than any standard router. For that matter, with access to the ISP's hardware, you wouldn't even have to do that (being subject to spoofing et. al. anyway). You should just tap directly the data from whatever modem/router the suspect's account is currently being accessed with.

    This much more discriminatory system should be combined with a wiretap order that is ACCOUNT SPECIFIC, meaning you have to explicitly state which ISP accounts you are going to be monitoring, just as (I assume) you have to explicitly state which phone numbers you are going to be tapping in a standard wire-tap order.

    Together these two simple provisions (which should be in place anyway) would mean that the government would have the hardware purposefully designed only to listen to traffic destined to a specific account, and would be explicitly stating ahead of time which accounts it intended to tap. As a result, police stepping outside of their bounds would be easier to catch, easier to regulate, and easier to punish.

    The net result is that you have to prove to a judge ahead of time that you think someone's account might reasonably be used to transmit information to/from/about the suspect, before you can get the tap in the first place. This is the same as phone taps; you can't just go randomly tapping phone lines in the hope of netting a conversation about a suspect. You have to have a reasonable belief that the line you are tapping is somehow related to the investigation BEFORE hand. This shouldn't be hard to justify or implement with internet taps; after all, if you're tapping the suspect's account and all his outgoing data, you're going to know from there exactly what other e-mail addresses or ISP users you may be interested in. All of this protects the privacy of those who are innocently involved or completely uninvolved, while at the same time providing the police all the power they need to get the evidence on their suspect.