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Carnivore-like tool released as Open Source
Joe Smith writes "NetworkICE released a new Carnivore-like tool that does *everything* FBI said Carnivore is supposed to do." Of course there's no way the FBI will accept this, and the conspiracy theorists will use this as proof that Carnivore is doing more then the FBI is 'fessing up to.
While I agree with most of your sentiments, my real dislike of the Carnivore (or RIP in the UK) situation is this:
Citizens don't mind that their government agents are able to obtain wiretap warrants on specific people, because the warrants have to come from a particularly high authority and there must be a valid reason for obtaining each and every individual wiretap. The privellege of being able to legally listen in on someone's conversations is balanced against the level of evidence required to be submitted in advance, and also the accountability for your actions if you wiretap for malicious reasons rather than investigating crime.
However, with these new systems, the government agents now have full unguarded access to most but not all of the country's email. There is full anonymity for the agents involved, and there is no accountability. They do not need to give any reasoning to obtain the authority to spy on people, because they've installed near-blanket surveillance on their nation.
Onto the topic of an open-source versus secret carnivore, I'd like to see that there really was a system of authority in operation, ie only the named person's email is captured. As for criminals reading the code to get out of the surveillance, firstly the FBI would be using this to _monitor_ someone, and if it all goes quiet they would investigate why, and if it's via manipulations to get out of the monitored stream, they could trace through that with the ISP and close any hole. Secondly, simply not using email or using an ISP without Carnivore will get you out of trouble, as will end-to-end encrypted IPv6 streams when they hit mainstream, much more effective than reading thorough source code.
Carnivore is the stuff of Orwellian futures, and I just want to see some declaration of accountability to the public here, not demonizing of Internet users as drug dealing terrorist paedophiles.
Does my bum look big in this?
A. The governent has the ability to catch all the paedophiles, terrorists and so on by means of black boxes which read all their email. Since the boxes are black, you have to take it on Government say-so that they operate legally and only under warrant. The government therefore has the capability to silently upgrade the box to spy at any time on the private communication of all its law-abiding citizens, and send the men in balaclavas round to fetch anyone that seems subversive. Meanwhile all terrorists and paedophiles with two brain cells to rub together are not using the internet to discuss their evil plans.
B. The black box is not in place, or an open solution is used instead, and a few people use the internet to plan crimes.
I would suggest that under the US constitution option B is the only viable one. Ditto the European Human Rights laws. And personally I would certainly prefer option B.
To put it a different way: If a relative of yours was blown up after two men in trench coats planted a bomb, and this could have been prevented had all policemen had orders to shoot on sight all people wearing trench coats, would this have been the right thing to do? Sometimes we have to choose the lesser of two evils.
Curious that no one has listed the links for the Page, Company, or Source Code. Let alone the Forum or associated presentation. Maybe this will help: http://www.networkice.com/altivore/
-a.e.mossberg