Carnivore Demo Report

An anonymous reader sends: "Here's an archived copy of an anonymously remailed report on a demonstration of two versions of Carnivore by an FBI agent, at the recent NANOG 20 meeting."

michael : People are really interested in the "inner workings" of Carnivore, as shown by the many submissions. I never thought it was anything special - from the start, when I first knew that the FBI had an Internet interception box, I just assumed that it would neatly sort and deliver all Internet traffic of a particular target. I can spec out how I would design such a box; and the FBI isn't stupid; so I assume they would do it in a similar fashion. I think there's still a lot of disbelief out there, though - "You mean the FBI can really track both Web access AND email? And IRC? And Usenet? ...." People just don't believe it, because they're used to thinking of Internet traffic in different terms than phone or whatever.

The only important design aspects of the carnivore box are things like "Can the FBI set it to snoop on traffic it isn't supposed to? Can I dial into the box and snoop on my neighbors?" and other questions like that, which we'll *never* find out from any powerpoint presentation.

So get used to it, people. Assume that Carnivore neatly captures, sorts, and delivers all traffic that passes through it, and that the FBI can just type in your name and plug it in. Assume that there's a user-friendly, point-and-click interface. Assume that it will pretty-print reports, ready for filing with the court if/when you are prosecuted. Assume that there's essentially no oversight of the FBI's use of this device - after all, judges exercise almost no oversight over wiretaps, there's no reason to believe that Internet-tapping will be overseen any more diligently. The FBI and police approach wiretapping requests in the same way that conniving children approach their parents - it only takes one judge to approve a request, and the FBI can approach as many different ones as needed until they find the one that just doesn't care and rubber-stamps everything.

Get used to it. Want more data about how Carnivore works? Push for the source code to be opened. Nothing else will provide any more information about the system. You can't tell how secure it is (against the FBI, or against anyone else) from a presentation.

As for me, I'm steadily moving toward encrypting as much of my traffic as possible. I set up ssh for my home network recently. I'm setting up SSL. I'm reading up on IPSEC. I guess I just don't have a very trusting nature. The way I figure it, the time to set up countermeasures is before you expect to need them.

Comments

Encouraging Encryption

[Col. Klink (retired)]

After all these years of doing everything in their power to stop encryption via export regs and Clipper & friends, the US government is *finally* doing something to encourage the use of encryption. Good on them!