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Carnivore To Die?
Mr_CFG writes "Rep. Dick Armey is looking to tighten FBI funding in order to starve Carnivore, and is asking AG Ashcroft to review the Constitutional questions surrounding
the program" Rep Armey raises a good point, citing the recent Supreme Court decision regarding high tech survellaince, strongly limiting the government's ability to monitor things inside the home.
It will have no more funding, so it will just disappear into thin air. Oh good, and I was getting worried that we were all being watched.
;-)
This announcement is as good as the fact that americans don't build chem/bio/nuclear weapons anymore.
-Vic
While for a long time I've agreed with John Q. Slashdotuser that Carnivore is an invasion of privacy and the like, I've recently changed my view.
I work for a medium-sized ISP. Not too long ago, we had a server that was broken into and used for launching DDOS attacks, despite being well-maintained with security patches and intrusion detection systems. While rummaging through the system after the break-in was detected, the logs pointed to a couple other ISPs, as would be expected.
When I went to contact the other providers, one of them responded *much* quicker than usual for a major hosting company. We exchanged six emails in the course of an hour regarding the specifics of the system compromise, and shortly thereafter I received a call from our boys in the bureau.
It turns out that there had been a carnivore system at the other provider watching specifically for the perpetrator of the attack on our server. The traffic that was captured there helped diagnose the breakins (along with many others).
In talking with the agent, I *quickly* realized that this isn't used for "black helicopter" surveillance. They don't give a flip about the data they accidentally collect that has your credit card number paying for that adult website and they don't care about that email you sent to your friend about the meeting. If anything, the stuff that is accidentally captured is taking up disk space where REAL forensic data could be.
Most of the FBI people who deal with carnivore aren't out to find anyone who's committing a crime. They're not out to invade the privacy of internet users. They're people with computer and networking backgrounds like you or me and they dig through the electronic clues to provide reports to higher-ups that are clueless about the technology.
It's a good thing. Let's try to look at both sides.
-Chris
...More Powerful than Otto Preminger...
However, I dont really think that it is reasonable to expect privacy when browsing on the Internet
Let's see... what else is not private? How about calling your doctor? The phone network is a "public place", by your reasoning. Sure, let's just have the phone company record your conversations and publish the statistics to interested parties.... Do ISPs do this now? Yes, but I expect that to last until the first law suit that cripples an ISP because they sold what ammounts to medical information to the wrong party. Americans are very sensitive to their tenuous right to privacy, and the trigger is usually violence against women or medical information.
My stepfather has worked with Carnivore(he is a high ranking federal law enforcement agent) and when we talked about the Carnivore system he said that it is much harder to get a warrent for it or for taking a computer than it is to get warrents for searching more traditional things.
Of course, it's harder now; they're working out the ground-rules. However, if attitudes like yours prevailed, I would expect it to be much easier within the next few years. Thankfully, many judges take the long view, and such invasions will likely be curtailed over the next few years.
--
Aaron Sherman (ajs@ajs.com)
If we incrementally allow more and more intrusive searches, eventually they will come to seem more 'reasonable'.
None of these high-tech methods of spying on citizens were available at the time the Bill of Rights were written. That, alone, should be enough to disqualify them as unreasonable since they were certainly not considered 'reasonable' -- or even considered at all -- in the language of the document.
Geeky modern art T-shirts
I think the expectectation and reasonableness rise in proportion to the amount of government probing into our lives. If the government and companies weren't so intent on gathering so much info on us, and monitoring all of our activity, and even checking our thoughts, we wouldn't be so obsessed with privacy.
--
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
Huh?
It's a packet sniffer. But you have to have physical access to the ISP's datacenter to use it.
The real question (arguably unanswered) is whether or not the part of your TCP/IP connection between your home and the first router away from your ISP constitutes part of your home.
The argument can be made that it does - they could just wiretap you. But they don't, choosing to use the ISP's outbound pipe to wiretap everyone and (so they tell us :) then throw away the data from everyone but you. They do this for the sake of convenience (It's arguably harder to wiretap a cablemodem. Or optical fiber to the home. Or line-of-sight laser to the home...).
That is, Carnivore is just an easy way (using means not available to the general public, like sitting down in an ISP's datacenter) of getting access to your data stream (which is information they would not otherwise be able to gain without having to) wiretap you (which would typically require physical access to your property or the wires/cables/lasers/EM-fields connecting thereto or emanating therefrom).
I don't know how far that'd fly in court, but it sounds like a non-frivolous argument using the recent SCOTUS ruling as precedent. I don't know how they'd rule, but I'd think the Justices would have to think about it for a while before ruling either way.
The supreme court decision did not say thermal imaging could not be used ... it only said a warrant would be required.
Protections against misuse of carnivore would be good.
Eliminating carnivore would make the FBI less effective. Unless you would like more terrorists and kidnappers running around.
Jack Valenti and the MPAA are to technology as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone
The Supreme Court decision actually has very little to do with Carnivore. I'm surprised to see such technological illiteracy on /. but I have learned to lower my expectations over the last couple of years.
The Supreme Court decision concerns surveillance of an intrusive nature that gives police access to information they would not otherwise have been able to gain without physical access. Carnivore has absolutely nothing to do with such kinds of surveillance. Carnivore is nothing more than a glorified packet sniffer.
As such, it picks up (pursuant to lawfully obtained search warrants) information that is sent OUTSIDE any area that could be reasonably considered private. When you send e-mail or browse the Web, you are submitting information on a public network, and as such, police are perfectly entitled to perform surveillance there, provided they have the appropriate judicial permission (in the form of a warrant).
Amendment IV
From the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Ed.
Should the 4th ammendment and definition of privacy not satisfy you, lets look at our magic bullet...
Amendment IX
Just because a right isn't listed in the constitution does not mean said right may be taken away.
Deal with it. We have a right to privacy.
"It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong." --Voltaire
Eliminating carnivore would make the FBI less effective. Unless you would like more terrorists and kidnappers running around.
"Those who would trade their essential Liberty for a perceived temporary Security deserve neither Liberty nor Security." --Benjamin Franklin.
For example, radio and television were unknown at the time the First Amendment was drafted. But that amendment clearly means that Congress shall not muck about with free speech on radio or television, just as they shall not in newspapers. (In practice, we have let them get by with fudging somewhat for broadcasters, on the theory that the airwaves are a public resource. Shame on us.)
Anyway, we can't automatically claim the Fourth Amendment protects against high-tech surveillance because the authors didn't know about it. Instead, we have to make our arguments based on the meaning of the amendment, as others have done on this thread and previous ones. If the situation has changes so much that we cannot apply the meaning of the amendment any more (or if the SCOTUS applies the meaning foolishly), then it is time to consider amending the Constitution again.
"Rub her feet." -- L.L.
Heh, that's a good one. I'll need to run it past my wife next time she asks me for a few minutes of solitude in the bathroom...
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
There has ALWAYS been a reasonable assurance of privacy in human affairs. This comes from the simple fact that people simply cannot know everything that is going on to everyone else. If you live in a world where it is fundamentally unlikely that other people know what is going on in your life, than you have a reasonable assurance of privacy. Call it ignorance if you like, but it has always existed, and people have grown ( I might go so far as to say evolved ) to depend upon it.
Communications is used by all social animals to counteract this inherent social ignorance. As communications technology increases our abilities to share information, it must naturally erode that reasonable sense of privacy.
At one point it was possible to simply travel a few dozen miles to another town and one could recreate oneself with a totally new identity and life. As communications and transportation technology has made it easier to travel and communicate, and effectively made the world "smaller", one must travel further and further to gain that kind of anonymity that was once very simple.
You also say that privacy is merely a social way of hiding the abuse of men upon women. This is a very simplistic view of the matter IMHO. But it is a more specific rephrasing of the general notion that privacy is only used to conceal criminal or improper deeds, that only those with something to hide need privacy.
This notion is false because it is based upon two false assumptions. Firstly it assumes that privacy is defense against the general public, which is not at all true - privacy is mainly a defense against small groups of individuals, whether they be neighbours or the police, or anyone else. Very few people worry about having their homes invaded by a camera crew from CNN for live broadcast, but it might be a very real worry that a neighbour, or the police, or that someone with a grudge might invade their homes.
Secondly it assumes that all private actions are going to be treated as fairly in the eyes of anyone who observes them. This is plainly false. For every opportunity to use privacy to hide criminal or improper behaviour there is also an opportunity to use a lack of privacy to falsely or improperly accuse someone of such an activity. What you might consider to be perfectly acceptable behaviour in private, another person could think of as being totally unacceptable, and vice-versa.
As the famous Franklin / Jefferson quote says:
"he who sacrifices freedom for security will neither have, nor deserver either" ( or something along those lines )
Stop and think for a moment about a society where everyone is comfortable in their sense of privacy and private security, compared to one in which everyone is in fear of constantly being watched. Which society is really the more secure? Naturally it is the first. Social fear, and fear for ones person, whether it be physical or not, is definitely one of the quickest routes to acts of violence. Totalitarian states are much more prone to social unrest and violent upheaval than are democratic ones.
Claiming that privacy is a morally bankrupt concept created by artifical means belies a huge misunderstanding on your part of human nature. Privacy is one of the most morally important institutions that we have - and it is related strongly to the respect for individuals which would IMHO be exactly what a society needs more of to prevent violence against women, not less. Removing the respect for privacy from public life does not give any more security, but rather simply replaces one insecurity with another, and adds to the mix increased tension and unease which can only lead to more problems, not less.
There are a thousand forms of subversion, but few can equal the convenience and immediacy of a cream pie -Noel Godin
With all due respect, people do not desire a curtain so that they may only commit crimes. Not all men beat their wives. Not all men rape their wives. And additionally, not all people grown weed in their house.
I, for one, have a very strong desire for privacy--whether "artificial" as you call it or otherwise. No one needs to see me make love to my wife (no, it's not rape since she always consents). No one needs to see that I can't last five minutes. And no one needs to know I've got a hideous birthmark on my left cheek. There is just no reason for you, the government, or anyone else to see those things.
Similarly, there is absolutely no reason for anyone--government or not--to watch me doing legal things in my house. I have guns--but that doesn't give anyone the right to inspect them on demand (unless you want to merely ascertain the pain that occurs when one is shot). I also have DVDs and computers--but that also does not give anyone the right to inspect my computers to determine if I'm copying the DVDs to them (I'm not).
The entire fourth amendment's protection against unreasonable search and seizure is an artifical curtain. Not every government has such a constitutionally given right. This right was not given to early colonists, and was one of those issues that forced our revolution. We all need to respect this right; whether you feel that your life should be broadcast on television 24-hours-a-day or not.
Long, cute, or funny Sigs are just another form of over compensation, used by geeks, nerdz, etc.