Slashdot Mirror
IIT's Carnivore Review "A Sham"?
plastickiwi writes: "According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, U.S. House of Representatives majority leader Dick Armey is on the warpath about the Illinois Institute of Technology's nascent review-in-progress of the U.S. government's Carnivore technology. Find the article on their site.
'It's a bad idea to have people with clear political ties reviewing a system under political scrutiny,' said a spokesman for Armey. In a prepared statement Armey referred to the review as 'a whitewash.' Ouch."
(ok, the title is probably going to get me marked as a "troll", but I think it's really relevant...)
I'm worried about the level of "purity" we seem to be demanding of anyone these days, in all sorts of situations. The reason I titled this post "Requiring Virgins" is that it almost seems as though we insist on a level of untouchability that no one can reasonably meet. That is, we're back to the "if your daughter's not a virgin on her wedding night, well, she's a slut and obviously not marriagable." It used to be (back in the old, old, days) that if you discovered your wife had actually slept with another man before you married her, it was grounds for instant divorce (and pretty much complete social ostrication); never mind that men slept with anything with 2 tits and a hole (pardon my French).
Two recent examples here on /. : Judge Reinquist's son and the Dean in this story. There may be lots of reasons why IIT is not a good choice for the review, but complaining that someone who isn't doing the review, nor is directly involved in the review in any way once had ties to the DOJ 13 years ago is ludicrous. Likewise, the whole thing about Reinquist and his son (who's so peripherally tied to the MS cases it's silly) is muckraking.
This usually comes up in political cases, where random associates or old-and-forgotten acts are used to tar-and-feather someone unreasonably. But I'm seeing this in lots of other aspects, too. We seems to be expecting that anyone involved in anything we care about has a level of untouchability that only cartoon characters can have. People, if you don't have a "Conflict of Interest", you're not qualified to do it. By this I mean that you can't possibly work in a field without having some ties to something that theoretically might be a "Conflict of Interest". We seem to have lost all reason in judging these things.
I'm tired of living in a society where people seemt to think that the only way to "trust" someone is to have everyone live in a glass house under a microscope all the time. And it's not just corporations and gov't invading our privacy. It's you and me, too, everytime we cry to see something we have no business looking at (fundamentally, why the outcry every time political candidate refuses (or hell, is even late) releasing their tax returns? That's fucking private, and isn't germane to the issue!)
Full disclosure is one thing. However, full disclosure with an anal probe, and being disqualified because you have a pimple on your ass is another. I'm tired of this crap.
-Erik
There are always four sides to every story: your side, their side, the truth, and what really happened.
Indeed - why worry?
Just because you are emailing a friend something that you believe is perfectly innocent, yet because of the totalitarian, conservative, fundamentalist laws we have, which number in the thousands (if not higher), most of which you cannot even begin to know, due to the convoluted nature of the language they are drafted in (notwithstanding the sheer number) - what you sent is actually somehow against the law (perhaps it was a letter explaining how to reverse engineer the new Captain Crunch decoder ring, and you fell afoul of the DMCA), and thus you should be brought up on criminal charges.
Why worry indeed...
I support the EFF - do you?
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
What's to stop the FBI from offering
Black Box A
for review, but using
Black Box B ("Carnovore 2.0") once they get so-called approval?
The shitty thing is that in a few years-- if not stopped now-- it'll all be taken for granted that Carnivore, the DMCA, etc. are ok.
-------------------
-------------------
This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
The problem is that a true comprehensive review is impossible without access to the inner workings of the box. Nobody who will fully disclose to the public the risks of Carnivore is ever going to be given access to those inner workings. (The government clearly either has something to hide, or they are relying on security through obscurity.) Anyone who can be trusted, isn't going to agree to the terms. If MIT or Berkeley were to agree to the terms necessary to get access to the inner workings, then those institutions wouldn't have the reputations that they currently have.
So, at best, the only analysis that will ever come from a trustworthy party will be one that can only study the box from the outside (or one that can crack it to reveal its secrets).
I don't think MIT and Berkeley are going to be too interested in studying a black box from the outside, and they are especially not going to want to put their reputations on the line and say that it's safe, just because they don't find anything. (Why? Because they won't know for sure.) Hackers may be the ones who are willing to do the only job that can be done.
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
That's just too funny and too scary at the same time. If I ever witness a crime, they can count me out of the Federal Witness Protection Program; I'm moving to Tahiti!
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
Diamond: Whatever shall we do, oh wise one?
Armey: What we do everytime we don't want blood on our own hands.
Diamond: You can't mean... no... it's too horrible!
Armey: We have little choice in this matter. Summon the Independent Counsel!
Gooonnnnnngggggg!
Starr: You rang?
Armey: We require your services, most illustrious independent minded and ever so fair one!
Starr: No problem, I'll find Clinton guilty for only $26,000,000 this time.
--
Chief Frog Inspector
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I think the whole point of what Armey's saying is addressing all your things he didn't explicitly mention, except one. And that is that the premise of Carnivore is a violation of civil liberties just by existing. On that point, he's hearing one story from the Clinton Administration, and another from the rest of the world. The whole point of an independent review is to sort out exactly what carnivore does and how it does it.
I mean, talk about nit picky. When /. went up in arms about it, Congress demanded a review of Carnivore. Then, we got mad when we found out that everyone who would review it was working for the president whose people built it-- and Congress is mad about that, too. Trying to jump in the Majority Leader's head and find a reason why this isn't good news is really reaching. We complain that noone is doing the right thing on these issues, then when someone does, we fish around for reasons to still be mad at them. Sheesh!
We should be overjoyed that people are fighting for what we believe in, instead of just saying that they are hip to the internet and then trying to shove the clipper chip down our throats. (or national ID's or stopping fair use, or holding up encryption export, et al.)
Didn't we read that the entire review team seems to have top-secret level clearance? That some are ex-DoD people? That not a single one of them is a legitimate researcher or scientist without government ties?
You know what we need to do? Get a team of students. Not even graduates, undergrads. A pair of EE majors, and a half-dozen CS majors. Give them the device. Come back a month later, they'll be able to tell you what it does, how it does it, and how you can use it to screw iwth other people's stuff.
Let's consider some of the things he did say:
- Members of the team have political ties.
- Names weren't removed correctly.
That's all well and good, but let's look at the laundry list of problems he didn't mention:- The premise of Carnivore is a violation of civil liberties just by its existance.
- Most of the people involved aren't engineers, they're politicos (just academic politicos).
- Allowing the authors to choose the reviewers AT ALL won't ever work if you want unbiased reviews.
- Keeping the process secret simply encourages people to come up with conspiracy theories which will never EVER be dispelled.
- That just doing things like winnowing and chafing will remove any ability for Carnivore to do its job.
Ordinarily, I'm not one to look a gift horse in the mouth. But considering some of the things that Dick Armey's mouth has spouted (the Barney Frank incident comes to mind immediately), I'm not willing to take this as a victory.We want to win this by fighting on the right issues, not turning it into a political football. The moment it becomes a purely partisan battle, the larger issue is ignored and lost to all of us.
For the millionth time, it's NOT IIT doing the review. IIT is a tech school that is stuck in the awkward situation of being wedged between a huge government research project (IITRI) and one of the world's largest companies. (Motorola). Lets all be correct and talk about IITRI's review of Carnivore. Moderate me to hell...karma is like an ex-girlfriend,: it was good while it was here, but you don't give a damn when it's gone...
"I threw up my hands in disgust and wondered if it had been such a good idea to have eaten my hands in the first place."
Armey's just worried someone is going to put Carnivore on an ISP link and block everything that contains the word "Dick".
--
What happens when you outlaw guns
Uh, dude, just what do you think Carnivore IS? It's basically a glorified packet sniffer. There are tools already out there that do everything it does and more that the kiddies play with on a daily basis. The sticky point is that the kiddies and crackers have to try to sneak access undetected while the government can force ISPs to install it on their systems. The review isn't about the technical side of how it works - it's about what controls and limits (or lack thereof) are built into it. How do we know that they're only looking at Joe Crack-dealer's email and not at Wally Politically-incorrect's email as well?
"The legitimate powers of government extend only to such acts as are injurious to others." Thomas Jefferson.
Me: Why are people with classified clearance on the review group?
DOJ: We thought that information was secret!
Me: You didn't answer my question.
DOJ: What question?
We aren't that stupid. Give me a break.
Burn Hollywood Burn