Carnivore Comes Up Hungry

voodoogumbo writes "A USA TODAY article says universities are declining to review the FBI's controversial Carnivore email sniffer. Academics are concerned that the Justice Department is looking for little more than "rubber stamp" approval of the system. The sordid details are on their site."

Comments

This has to be the best part of the story...

[Sawbones]

Quoth the article:
-Researchers may examine only those matters the government wants examined.

Gov't: Please verify that this device has a power switch.

University: check.

Gov't: Thank you, this concludes your exhaustive evaluation.

Of course they want a "rubber stamp"

[bluesclues]

A lot of people are probably going to accuse me of being paranoid here but... I'm sure the government would like nothing more than a big university like MIT to say carnivore is okay. It's part of a propaganda war. Those who are then less educated or lazy will just think the government isn't spying on me, the folks at MIT even said so, and the as a whole Americans give up another bit of privacy. If the government was truly interested in letting the American people know carnivore was about they would open source it. What do they have to loose? There not going to sell the code to carnivore or are they. They want to assure the American public their privacy isn't being violated, don't they? If carnivore is truly what they say it is, let everyone look, not just the "elite" at a university.

I guess the U.S. is officially a police state

[TheFrood]

Justice's Colgate counters the FBI already has laws it must follow to intercept e-mail. "What we don't want is a debate over the government's inherent authority to conduct electronic surveillance.

The government's inherent authority to conduct electronic surveillance? Funny, I thought the government was only supposed to have the powers enumerated in the Constitution, and I'm fairly sure Madison&co. didn't include an "inherent authority to conduct electronic surveillance."

TheFrood

Rubber Stamp...

[DustyHodges]

If they really feel that this software is nothing to be worried about, why don't they put it up as an 'Ask Slashdot'?

Janet Reno asks:"I have the source code to a piece of software that my employer is a bit worried about. Do you think that this is a violation of anyone's rights?" So, what do you think crowd? Go ahead and check it out, and feel free to let us know what you think...

((Source Code Follows, then followed by 12 first posts, 18 Dickinson Poems, 23 Penis Birds, 4 rants on MDMA, and 1 comment about how the FBI sucks, moderated up to +5 Insightful.))

The Castrated Supreme Court

[CaptainCarrot]

Justice's Colgate counters the FBI already has laws it must follow to intercept e-mail. "What we don't want is a debate over the government's inherent authority to conduct electronic surveillance. If researchers find there are issues that have to be addressed, we can do that," he says. (Emphasis mine.)

Here is a government official, one of the top law enforcement officers in the country, who does not understand his own Constitution. The government has no inherent authority whatsoever! All the government's authority is delegated to it by the American people. If our Supreme Court weren't populated by a bunch of balless pinheads, they would have made that clear by now in numerous rulings. Instead they are by and large content to expand the government's ability to invade our privacy and usurp our rights pretty much whenever they are asked to.

It's things like this that make me despair of the Republic.