Carnivore Goes Wireless

GMontag writes: "The Washington Post Tech Section is running this story FBI's 'Carnivore' Might Target Wireless Text. Apparently, since the industry can't provide big brothering to the satisfaction of the FBI the FBI will will do it *for* them. This is a collector's item too, with no mention in article of DCS1000 being used to "save" children!"

Comments

radio

[geekoid]

wireless transmission can be monitored by anyone, not just the F.B.I.

Re:radio

[jandrese]

That's not true anymore, at least not in the US. In the US it is illegal to listen in on cell phone frequencies for instance.

Of course it's technicly feasable for anybody to do so, but it's not legal unless you are the FBI (or other law enforcement and you have the proper paperwork).

Re:radio

[Menteb]

well, so is making backdoors in webserver software and selling it to stupid people (euh... M$ maybe ;). I mean, not every person on the planet is born with good brains.

Re:radio

[rark]

"Can" is not the same as "is legal to"

or: it's perfectly feasable, just don't get caught. Wireless anything should not be considered secure (unless steps have been taken to secure it, obviously)

Not that that makes me less uncomfortable with the fbi...

*sigh*

[Reality Master 101]

What part of "subject to court order" don't you understand?

Sometimes I think there are people who seriously think we should completely ban law enforcement because there might be some miniscule possibility of abuse.

Re:*sigh*

[stuccoguy]

It is true that the FBI must get a court order in order to use Carnivore to intercept the contents of a suspect's communications. Under most circumstances this would be a satisfactory due process safeguard against abuse. In fact, it has been the status quo for preventing abuse by law enforcement for decades.

This is not the case with Carnivore. The system captures all trafic on the network based on protocol. A court order to intercept the contents of John Doe's email could also result in the capture of your email if it happens to be crossing the same network.

After the packets have been captured they are filtered to present a set of emails to and from the subject of the court order, but your email and the email of hundreds of other innocent individuals is already sitting on the FBI's computer waiting to be misused or abused.

And the threat of abuse of that information is hardly miniscule. This is the organization that withheld thousand of documents in the timothy mcveigh trial, attempted to railroad Wen Ho Lee as a spy for taking his work home with him, kept dossiers on thousands of politicians, businessmen and regular citizens for political motives, murdered Randy Weaver's wife and son, and massacred 33 women and children at Waco.

Re:*sigh*

[sphealey]

I think most people in the Western world understand court orders and the need for law enforcement. There are two minor problems, however:

* Law enforcement and the judiciary form a pretty much closed loop system. They come from similar backgrounds, they consider themselves the "good guys", and they prohibit investiations into their own motives/failures/biases. So when there is a problem with a request for a warrent the odds are that the judiciary will approve the request anyway.

* If you have spent much time with law enforcement people, you know that the "observe crime/gather evidence/make arrest" model isn't the only one they use. The "suspect crime/fish around for something/use something to get warrent/intimidate person into confessing or giving up someone else" model is pretty common, too. And the methods used to find "something" are not always pretty, legal, or constitutional.

In the past, while this behaviour may have been bad, it wasn't totally corrosive, because the ability to fish around for "something" was limited by the overall difficulty of gathering information.

The technologies being develped today, in contrast, make it quite easy to fish for whatever one wants to find. And since there are laws affecting just about every action (I am willing to bet you have violated 5 federal laws already today), the widespread availability of this technology gets more than a bit scary.

sPh

Re:*sigh*

[Stickster]

You are indeed underinformed, but that's typical of /.ers these days. The packets are filtered but then pursuant to the actual court order and normal Title III wiretap regulations the non-pertinent traffic is not retained "sitting on the FBI's computer" [sic] for later use. The irrelevant traffic must be discarded at the time of filtering.

Your obviously polemic (and clearly incorrect) comments at the end of your post don't even bear up to the slightest modicum of common sense. Do yourself a favor and don't believe everything you read or hear. Remember that the news media is a BUSINESS, not a public service. They have no motivation to report truth, especially when it doesn't generate good ratings.

Re:*sigh*

[stuccoguy]

What I'm saying is that if there aren't any better examples with which to illustrate the potential for the abuses of power, then this is as far as I think the message deserves to go.

Very well...here are a few more:

* DICK GREGORY: In 1968, the activist/comedian publicly denounced the Mafia for importing heroin into the inner city. Did the FBI welcome the anti-drug, anti-mob message? No. Head G-man J. Edgar Hoover responded by proposing that the Bureau try to provoke the mob to retaliate against Gregory as part of an FBI "counter intelligence operation" to "neutralize" the comedian. Hoover wrote: "Alert La Cosa Nostra (LCN) to Gregory's attack on LCN."
* FREEDOM RIDERS: In 1961, black and white civil rights workers boarded interstate buses in the North and headed south in an effort to desegregate buses nationwide. The FBI learned that when the freedom riders reached bus depots in Alabama, the state police were going to give the Ku Klux Klan "15 uninterrupted minutes" to beat activists with baseball bats, clubs and chains. The Bureau allowed the violence to occur; activist Walter Bergman spent the rest of his life in a wheelchair, partially paralyzed.
* VIOLA LIUZZO: The white civil rights volunteer from Detroit-a mother of five-joined Martin Luther King's 1965 Selma (Ala.) campaign aimed at securing the right to vote for blacks. She was shot and killed after being chased 20 miles at high speed by a carload of four Klansmen. In the car was Gary David Rowe, a well-paid FBI informant inside the Klan; the violence-prone Rowe had played a big role in the beatings of freedom riders years earlier. "He couldn't be an angel and be a good informant," commented one of his FBI handlers.
* FRANK WILKINSON: A lifelong civil libertarian who led the campaign to abolish the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities, his FBI surveillance file spans 30 years and 132,000 pages. Estimated cost to us taxpayers: $17 million. Wilkinson never advocated or committed violence, but the file shows that the Bureau burglarized his offices and encouraged beatings of him. The FBI once heard of a right-wing scheme to assassinate Wilkinson-but took no action to inform him or protect him.
* MARTIN LUTHER KING: For years, the FBI used spying and infiltration in a relentless campaign to destroy King- to wreck his marriage, undermine his mental stability and encourage him to commit suicide. The Bureau created dissension among King's associates, disrupted fundraising efforts and recruited his bookkeeper as a paid agent after learning the employee was embezzling.
The FBI utilized "media assets" to plant smear stories in the press - some insinuating that King was a Soviet agent. One FBI media asset against King in the early 1960s was Patrick Buchanan, then an editorial writer in St. Louis.
The FBI once hatched a scheme to "completely discredit" King and have him replaced by a civil rights leader the Bureau could control. The one individual named by the Bureau as "the right kind of Negro leader" was lawyer Samuel Pierce-who years later became the only black in President Reagan's cabinet.
King was hated and regularly threatened by white supremacists and extremists-but the FBI developed a written policy of not informing King about threats to his life. Why? Because of his "unsavory character," "arrogance and "uncooperative attitude."
* PETER BOHMER: For months in the early 1970s, this economics professor and other antiwar activists in San Diego were terrorized-with menacing phone calls, death threats and fire-bombings-by the Secret Army Organization, a right-wing paramilitary group. On Jan. 6, 1972, gunshots were fired into Bohmer's house, wounding a friend.
After a bombing months later, a trial revealed that Howard Barry Godfrey, co-founder of SAO in San Diego and one of its most active and violent members, had all along been a paid FBI informant. Godfrey testified that he had driven the car from which the shots were fired; afterward, he took the weapon to his FBI supervisor, who hid it.
* BLACK PANTHER PARTY: Some critics are denouncing the new movie Panther as an anti-FBI fantasy. But the hard facts about the FBI's war on the Panthers were published in 1976 by the Senate Intelligence Committee chaired by Frank Church. Using paid infiltrators and faked documents, the Bureau routinely tried to goad militant groups or street gangs to commit violence against the Panthers.
In southern California, FBI agents helped provoke Ron Karenga's militant US group into attacks on Panthers and boasted about it in memos to headquarters. When the FBI learned that the Panthers and US were trying to talk out their differences, agents did their best to reopen the conflict. Four Panthers were ultimately killed by US members, two on the UCLA campus.
In Chicago, the FBI office forged and sent a letter to the Blackstone Rangers gang leader saying the Panthers had a "hit out" on him. The FBI's stated hope was that he "take reprisals against" the Panther leadership.
Although that plan failed, Chicago Panther chief Fred Hampton (age 21) was killed months later in a predawn police assault on his apartment. Hampton's bodyguard turned out to be an FBI agent-provocateur who, days before the raid, had delivered an apartment floor-plan to the Bureau-with an "X" marking Hampton's bed. Most bullets were aimed at his bedroom. The infiltrator received a $300 bonus: "Our source was the man who made the raid possible," stated an FBI memo.
Among the hundreds of schemes detailed in FBI memos were plans to contaminate the Panther newspaper's printing room with a noxious chemical; to inject a powerful laxative into fruit served to kids as part of the Panthers' free breakfast program; and to target smear campaigns at various Hollywood celebrities who had come to the Panthers' defense.
* CENTRAL AMERICA ACTIVISTS: Many recent news accounts say that FBI abuse pretty much ended with J. Edgar Hoover's death in 1972, and that the Bureau has been in check since the Justice Department issued new guidelines in 1976. Not true. FBI disruption of lawful dissent has continued-though the terminology has changed, from counterintelligence (COINTELPRO) to "counterterrorism."
During the 1980s, groups critical of U.S. intervention in Central America were surveilled, infiltrated and disrupted by the FBI. Political break-ins occurred at churches, offices and homes-and material from the burglaries ended up in FBI files. In the guise of monitoring supporters of foreign terrorists, the FBI compiled files on clergy, religious groups and thousands of nonviolent anti-intervention activists. The investigation produced not a single criminal charge. The whole sordid story is detailed in Break-ins, Death Threats and the FBI, a book by former Boston Globe reporter Ross Gelbspan.

from the book Wizards of Media Oz.

Re:*sigh*

[karb]

You're leaving out my favorite instance of FBI opression ... the KKK.

Why is it my favorite? Because it kind of discredits ideas that the FBI is part of a right-wing conspiracy.

At any rate, the FBI doesn't pull the kind of crap now that it did then. The media wouldn't stand for it, for one.

Sure, there is FBI misconduct. But there is no way to prevent misconduct in any group of people. And it isn't unreasonable for any group of people to protect their own in cases of wrongdoing. And if a group of people doesn't have the opportunity to make mistakes, it's because they aren't doing anything.

Not carte blanche for the FBI, of course ... I just dislike the /. a priori premise of "because it could be abused".

Re:*sigh*

[Col. Klink (retired)]

> What part of "subject to court order" don't you understand?

Tell it to Martin Luther King, Jr. The FBI tapped his phones (*with* a court order) and discovered he was having an extramarrital affair. Since they couldn't arrest him for that, they sent him letters threatening to expose him and suggesting suicide would be a better alternative.

Today, the FBI's headquarters are named in honor of the man who was at the top of the FBI during those "investigations".

Now I'm supposed to believe that they should have access to every letter I type on a keyboard? Even the "independent" review of Carnivore revealed that the system had no real accountability and that a rouge agent could access everything captured without tracing the agent's access.

Re:*sigh*

[crucini]

The US had law enforcement long before the FBI existed. Law enforcement does not necessarily need to snoop on communications. Real crimes leave evidence in the real world. Crimes that require eavesdropping to prove probably shouldn't be crimes.

I'm sure there are exceptions, most of which involve people conspiring to commit "real world" crimes. But are the exceptions worth the price?

What part of "subject to court order" don't you understand?

This part.

Re:*sigh*

[mixup]

Sure, there is FBI misconduct. But there is no way to prevent misconduct in any group of people. And it isn't unreasonable for any group of people to protect their own in cases of wrongdoing.

When the group of people are operating under the guise of "public servants" using public funding, I believe it *is* unreasonable for them to protect their own from the public in cases of wrongdoing.

Regardless, misappropriation of data against stated policies and laws has been de rigeur for various federal agencies. Misappropriation of census data was the number one tool for rounding up Japanese-Americans for the WWII internment camps, for example. But so many abuses have already been cited that I'll not belabor the thread with further examples.

Sure, the FBI are not the only ones illegally misappropriating data. Businesses do it, catholic school girls do it, in many ways it's human nature ... but it is of course still wrong and extremely dangerous when done by a government agency.

What if someone on the same cellular switch as me is being investigated, and my text messages to my gay lover get intercepted, tagged, and stored? That's not information the FBI has any right to know. It's not illegal (at least in my state), but could be easily used against me by a corrupt agent, or in a court case to discredit me to a homophobic jury, or a slew of other ways.

It's the indiscriminate nature of Carnivore that makes it so scary in this instance. If you get a court order to listen in to my neighbor's communications, that should not entitle you to listen to my own.

Clarification

[ViceClown]

Here's a point I have been meaning to make for awhile. My uncle does computer fraud investigations for the FBI. Yes, that's right - he's a fed. I brought up this topic to him at our last family function. What most people don't realize is that Carnivore is actually going to be less restrictive than old procedures. If the FBI or one if it's investigators wants to subpeona email know what they do? They take the whole server. They take all the email and just route through until they find what they want. The point is they take it all and have access to anyone and everyone who went through that box. With Carnivore they can pick out who they are looking for through standard procedures and as long as you are not a fedral criminal you have nothing to worry about. Frankly, if that helps stop bombs from going off at olympic games and helps track down illegal malitias, hate groups, etc. then Im all for it!

Re:Clarification

[Peter Simpson]

>as long as you are not a fedral criminal you have nothing to worry about

Tell your uncle that, after Richard Nixon and J Edgar Hoover's reign, the FBI has got a HELL of a job ahead of them if they plan to convince anyone
of the truth of that statement.

Re:Another reason for encryption

[yellowstone]

What's needed is a good wireless encryption standard with good firmware decoding

Given the current corporate Zeitgeist (what's ours is ours, and what's yours is ours), I wouldn't be inclined to invest a lot of faith in any COTS hardware-based encryption scheme.

Not to say I wouldn't use it, but I wouldn't consider it secure without some open-source software encryption package running on top of it.

Aren't the telcos mostly there?

[ethereal]

This seems a little suspicious to me - from what I've heard, most of the wireless providers are well on their way to providing the federally-mandated wiretapping access. They can't be very far off from completing the technical setup that is involved. It seems like the Feds are useing the missed deadline (which really was an artificial deadline anyway) as a convenient excuse to expand their wiretapping powers. It's not like there were crimes that just had to be wiretapped on September 30; as long as the wireless carriers get things rolled out reasonably soon I don't see how the government could legitimately complain.

And yes, anyone can tap wireless, but the issue is what can be used in court. If the government is sucking in more information, then there's more of a chance that a bad judge somewhere can be found who will let unrelated intercepted information into evidence.

Of course, since you have no privacy right on a land-line phone either, maybe Carnivore isn't such a big deal either :)

Carnivore FUD

[sourcehunter]

Look folks, I have some friends who work at the FBI - not agents, but the guys who actually setup and maintain the carnivore system, go on raids WITH the agents to make sure the computers are handled successfully, and parse through 100's of GB of data after a raid to determine what is of and what isn't. (this goes against common misconception #1 that the agents actually sort through the data - they do not - they have a computer guy do it).

One day, I asked my friends about carnivore.

Carnivore is a very simple system - TCPDump, a filter, and a sort utility. It is a black box administered from remote, setup at their office.

The filter is setup to only record a handfull of things - a) email communications to or from a suspect as specified in a warrant or b) packets to or from a certain IP address designated by the warrant.

It does not capture and save every packet going across the wire - that would be illegal.

Let me say that again, as it bears repeating - It does not capture and save every packet going across the wire.

Yes, in a TCPDump, all packets are going to be pulled that hit the network interface, but the filter will only save the packets that meet a certain criteria.

They developed this with the WHOLE IDEA of making DAMN sure they stay within the confines of their warrants - because otherwise, they are breaking the law. Also, they would have to go through 100's of GB of data if they captured EVERY packet at a standard ISP. At an ISP like mindspring, the amount of data captured would be unfathomable.

The computer guys actually know how to set the thing up properly, so you don't have to rely on the standard Liberal Arts/Criminal Justice major FBI agent to understand what he or she is doing. All the agent might do is drop the big black box off at an ISP, plug in the power cable and network cable, and walk out.

Don't get me wrong - I personally don't like the FBI or its agents. I've had run-ins with them in the past, and the ones I met I didn't like. The guys who deal with this AREN'T agents... they are computer geeks, like you and me. They read /., the game, they program in Perl and other ub3r-1337 h4x0r languages. They know what they are doing, AND they do EVERYTHING in their power to make sure ONLY those communications that they NEED and are supposed to HAVE get captured.

Re:Carnivore FUD

[stuccoguy]

It appears that the FBI has been less than candid about the technical aspects of what carnivore can and does do. There are lawsuits and congressional investigations proceeding in an attempt to weed out this very issue. We would be remiss if we assumed that we knew exactly how this system does and does not work.

However, there is evidence to support the fact that both filtered and unfiltered traffic are archived and later sorted.

Re:Carnivore FUD

[sphealey]

"It does not capture and save every packet going across the wire - that would be illegal."

It is also illegal to fail to respond to a legitimate Freedom of Information Act request, yet the FBI and CIA do it all the time. What is your friends' justification for that behaviour? If the FBI won't follow that law, why will they follow the law where Carnivore is concerned?

sPh

"miniscule" possibility of abuse?!

[disc-chord]

While it is true that this is just another hysterical /. story in which the poster saw a headline and just put it up without reading the article...

I think Carnivore is alot larger than a "miniscule possibility of abuse" ... it represents an "actuall violation of privacy". I would not ban law enforcement because of this, I just want law enforcement to play fair. How would you like to play Cops & Robbers where the cops get to have unfair advantages like not having to play by the rules they are supposed to be enforcing? That's no fun, that's cheating! Criminals are people too, stop taking away all their fun.

There already is a Wireless Carnivore!

[V50]

The FBI has already got a Wireless Carnivore. It only effects CPIP right now, but it's a disturbing start.

Miniscule possibility of Abuse

[Bonker]

Heh...

This attitude never ceases to amaze me.

Once upon a time, when I was sixteen years old and driving home from my girlfriend's house one evening, I was pulled over by a police officer in what could be called the bad side of the town. Although North Amarillo is still a fairly nice neighborhood, it does have a slightly higher crime rate and lower property values than the south side.

Thinking to my self... 'I wonder why I've been pulled over?' I remained calm because I had done nothing. What could I possibly have to fear from a uniformed law enforcement officer when I hadn't done anything wrong.

Said officer pulled me from the car at gunpoint and shoved my face into the asphalt... the gun pressed into the base of my skull... while he cuffed me and frisked me. He threw me into the back of his patrol car and then illegally searched my car.

I learned later that he did all this because there had been reports of a 'drive by shooting' in my girlfriend's neighborhood. My car matched the description, so in the cop's mind I was a dangerous unknown... dangerous enough to hold a gun to my head. He felt he had 'probable cause' to search my car for firearms based on an anonymous 911 call.

An attourney later told me candidly that I had very little chance to win a court case because the policeman released me after searching my car and the judges were all highly sympathetic to the police.

Now, what lessons should we all learn from this?

1. American criminal and police law is not designed to protect innocence. It's designed to punish the criminal.

2. Police will do their best to uphold that law out of honor, duty, hate, fear, or any other of a hundred positive or negative reasons.

3. Police don't care about innocents who get hurt or get their civil rights violated, so long as *they* aren't hurt and *their* jobs don't become any harder. There's a reason we have the term 'Police State'

4. Power breeds corruption. Any given law enforcement agency may have a policy against abuse, but almost all law enforcement officers will abuse their power in one way or the other.

I'm not the only one who things these things. There's a reason we have the fourth amendment, after all.

Re:Miniscule possibility of Abuse

[Anml4ixoye]

I was going to quote one section, but can't narrow it down.

I am truly sorry that you were not the right person. And yes, it was unfortunate that you were in the 'wrong place at the wrong time.' But, as much as I believe in individual liberties, if I was that cop I would have done the same thing.

I work in computers, but have spent 4 1/2 years as a firefighter as well. I am 22 and have seen a lot more than I would like. Like the outright murder of not one, but three police officers (two Tampa detective and one Highway Patrolman) as well as recently another murder of a Tampa Police Officer. Why? Because they did not do exactly what the police officer above did.

Let's play what if. What if you would have been that shooter? What if the officer had a report the shooter had high-caliber weapons? What if the report also involved possible other shootings? What if you had not been the shooter, but had a gun?

Unfortunately, because we are all human, mistakes are made. You were not held illegally, not tortured, nor beaten, you were 'secured' via a legal method of takedown in a possibly hostile situation. And if I was in your situation (and I have been) I would only be upset if the police officer would have continued to hold me for hours, or would not have released me, or would have had no reason at all.

As far as your points? I am not even going to start on them. I can say that you appear not to even know a Police Officer or (obviously) be one. As I tell people who complain about how open source projects are going, if you don't like it, do something about it. Don't sit on your freakin' butt and come up with reasons to make you feel better about yourself. Go out and do something. Become an officer. Put YOUR life on the line. Or help those that do. See how it feels to arrive on the scene of a shot officer, to see the destruction caused by it. To do everything you can and it not be enough. Do that, then come back and see how your viewpoints are.

Re:Miniscule possibility of Abuse

[Reality Master 101]

Once upon a time, [... blah story]

Thus illustrating the danger of anecdotal evidence. I wasn't there, I don't know all the details. However, when I say "miniscule possibility", I am saying that statistically this just doesn't happen that often. Does it happen? Of course. Does that mean we should ban law enforcement? No. Does it mean we should continue to watch them very carefully? Yes.

And does it mean we should "handcuff" law enforcement because of the *possibility* of abuse? Absolutely not.

Now, what lessons should we all learn from this?

That police are human, not perfect, and will possibly err on the side of caution when their life is in real danger. Sorry, but I can't say that I wouldn't have done exactly the same thing, particularly if it occurred in a dangerous neighborhood (which presumably it was if you have drive-by shootings). Personally, I would rather live and apologize, than die knowing I didn't frighten a possible innocent.

Re:Miniscule possibility of Abuse

[Frederic54]

reminds me Robocop... which has better laws

1 - serve the public trust
2 - protect the innocent
3 - uphold the law
4 - classified :o)

Re:Miniscule possibility of Abuse

[Tackhead]

> I was going to quote one section, but can't narrow it down.

Thanks for saying it better than I could. (Moderators, please consider the parent of this post...)

There's a world of difference between stuff like Carnivore (which I regard as an abhorrent evil), and an officer in a potentially life-threatening situation doing his job.

Had I been the cop in question, I, too, would have done the same thing. Had I been the "guy in the wrong place at the wrong time", I'd have been scared shitless, but once the mistaken identity issue had been clarified, and assuming the officer had acted professionally (and as it appears in this case, he did), I'd have complimented him on being safe and wished him good luck in catching the perp.

Re:Miniscule possibility of Abuse

[Bonker]

Damn right. I'd like to see the parent poster in the same situation facing a possibly armed, homicidal drive-byer, and have him politely ask the guy to step out of the car.

I might as well as you to put yourself in *my* position... wondering why there was a gun pressed in my face, knowing that all that stood between me and 'massive cranial trauma' was some fat cop's nerve. Heaven help me if I was black or hispanic and the cop happened to have a racist bent...

I could have twitched in the wrong direction. The cop's fingers could have gotten sweaty...

I was *this* close to being Amadou Diallo and you want to ask me how I would feel if my life was on the line?

There were dozens of ways the cop could have *not* violated my civil rights and put me in danger of being shot and losing my life. Instead, he chose to use the treath of deadly force on a person who had no clue what was going on.

The next time you think about cops wanting to protect them selves from 'possibly' violent individuals, why don't you spend a few minutes thinking about people like Diallo or any of the other perfectly innocent individuals who were killed because a cop thought they had to protect themselves. Think about Dmitry, who has been jailed under a bad law for a non-violent crime in a foreign government in clear violation of *our* bill of rights. Then ask yourself if we should be so quick to give *any* law enforcement agency more power.

Thank you, but when the cops ask for bigger guns, I'll pass.

Re:Miniscule possibility of Abuse

[romco]

"I would rather live and apologize, than die knowing I didn't frighten a possible innocent."

So it's ok frighten your wife or your child
as long as I apologize after?

Can I shoot them if I think they might have
a gun?

Where do you draw the line?

Re:Miniscule possibility of Abuse

[Chris Burke]

A friend of mine had his front door kicked in by police on a drug raid. He and his unarmed parents were beaten so badly that they will never recover from the hospital debt. The doctor mishandled his medication and now he's addicted to painkillers. He gets arrested a lot because whenever he sees a cop he runs in fear. The punchline? It was the wrong house.

An honest mistake? Well, going into the wrong house was. Crippling unarmed people was quite deliberate on the other hand. Is this SOP?

A much closer friend was attacked by a man on PCP in her own apartment building. Her skull was cracked open, and aside from nearly bleeding to death she still doesn't have full feeling back in her hands. When the cop arrived on the scene, did he arrest the perpetrator? No. Instead he informed this man of his right to have arrested the woman who had tried to save my friend by using an illegal can of mace. The cop took a perfunctory statement and to this day the man roams free.

Was that SOP?

Or I suppose the cops who beat Rodney King more than 60 times were doing so in fear for their lives.

Ever been pulled over for "driving while black"? I guess all people of african descent might be the suspect of a shooting nearby, so that makes sense, right? It's to save officers lives.

Sorry. It's bullshit. Yeah, maybe the poster's case was mistaken identity and an obnoxious but necessary use of procedure. But don't sit here and tell me that police abuse is necessary.

I do know a number of cops. I'd label all of them "basically nice guys". However, they all share an interesting viewpoint. In their mind, they are the "good guys", and thus anything they do to catch the "bad guys", or do to the "bad guys" once they are caught, is justified. They might feel bad if they screw up the wrong person, but not too bad, since it was all part of the process of getting the "bad guys".

Did I say interesting? I meant scary, because these people carry guns, authority, and far too little accountability.

Re:Miniscule possibility of Abuse

[Chris Burke]

No, Rodney King was beaten because he was on PCP and kept trying to get up when the officers told him to stay down.

And why did that have to result in being beaten? Were they afraid for their lives? Wouldn't at some point grabbing him and cuffing him be the more sensible option? Certainly less harmfull. But I guess I get the point -- do what the cop says, or get the shit beaten out of you. *hums America the Beautiful*

I'm not saying that the force used wasn't excessive, but let's not paint Rodney King as some innocent bystander.

Hardly at all. He was a bad man. That because he was a bad man the police thought it was okay to beat him 60+ times with clubs is exactly the thinking I am trying to expose to analysis.

It's the disturbing police mentality -- "It's okay because I'm the good guy" for any value of "it" -- that I'm speaking of. It is this mentality that causes me to have less than 0 trust for law enforcement, and fear giving them any more power.

If the facts are really as you lay them out, then sue the police department. And please don't say that they can't win, because people win police abuse cases every day.

Thanks. And I'm sure that knowing the bad cop lost his badge and that she'll get some nice money will help compensate for the irreperable damage to her body and career by the attack. Not that seeing the attacker go to jail would either, but I'm not here to discuss him.

Don't get me wrong. We'll sue. Without a doubt. I hope we'll win -- people win police abuse cases, every day, but they also lose some no-brainers *cough*RodneyKing*cough*. Of course it won't make up for what happened, it's just you -have- to sue because otherwise they get away with it scott-free.

But being able to sue if the police abuse their power doesn't make me feel good about giving them more power to abuse.

Again, no one says the police are perfect.

Hey, I'm not perfect either. Then again, if I beat you with a baton until you had brain damage, I don't think anyone would be trying to defend me by saying "no one ever said he was perfect".

Re:Miniscule possibility of Abuse

[Tassach]

And does it mean we should "handcuff" law enforcement because of the *possibility* of abuse?

Sounds like a good idea to me. Police misconduct isn't a "possibility", it's an all too common fact. There are far too many cops who wouldn't think twice about planting or manufacturing evidence, committing purjury, or conducting illegal searches & surveillance. Cops are rewarded (by promotions, raises, &commendations) for making arrests [particuarly ones that lead to convictions], and are only rarely held accountable for their own misconduct and criminal actions. Law Enforcement has too much power and not enough oversight and accountability: either we need to reduce thier power, or increase their accountability. Cops who break the law should be disciplined by the courts, not by their fellow officers.

We would not need so much "law inforcement" if we didn't have so many asinine and unconstitutional laws. Being safe from government oppression is just as important, if not more so, than being protected from violent individuals. It's fairly easy to defend yourself against random thugs; protecting yourself against an out-of-control government is much more difficult. Even as an upper-middle-class suburban white male with a squeaky clean lifestyle, I am far more afraid of being victimized by the police than by street hoods. I can only imagine what urban blacks and hispanics must go through.

Of course, in order for legal & police reform to work, we would need a criminal justice system that actually worked and kept the truly dangerous and violent people behind bars. Instead, we keep paroling murderers and rapists after they serve a fraction of their sentences, while keeping non-violent drug offenders incarcerated on inflated mandatory minimum terms.

The plea bargian and parole systems are hopelessly broken and need to be scrapped. I don't have the exact figures handy, but the vast majority of violent crimes are committed by a comparitively small number of repeat offenders. Eliminating parole will keep these people in prison longer. There have been numerous studies that show that the recidivism rate among violent convicts is inversely proportional to their age when released

Re:Miniscule possibility of Abuse

[Bonker]

Sure everyone makes mistakes and I'm willing to allow for that to happen.

The sad thing about this is that when I make a mistake, it means that my web server crashes. It means some data gets corrupted. At the very worst, it means that money is wasted or lost. I could lose my job.

When cops makes mistakes, people are injured. Their lives can be ruined or ended.

I'm not saying that most cops out there aren't doing their level best in a world that is openly hostile to them. I'm not saying that cops don't die when they make mistakes.

The above, however, is damn good reason to limit cops' power and their ability to make such incredible mistakes. If we can take away powers from the police and keep 'mistakes' and 'accidents' from happening, then let's do so.

"41 shots they cut through the night
You?re kneeling over his body in the vestibule
Praying for his life..." - The Boss

Re:Miniscule possibility of Abuse

[mosch]

if I was that cop I would have done the same thing.

This is incredibly sad. I had a similar situation occur, when working late one night. It was about 1am and I got a call that there was a personal emergency I needed to take care of. I left the office and drove very quickly towards home.

I got stopped in Warminster PA, held at gunpoint and had my car illegally searched because the police refused to believe that I was the legal owner and operator of my vehicle even after giving them all the relevant paperwork. It was only after the search came up empty, AND they got second-hand verification that my paperwork was legitimate that the guns were no longer pointed at me.

The only reason I didn't file a complaint was a fear of retalitory behaviour from the officers involved. After all, these were people who thought it was reasonable to keep multiple guns trained on an unarmed civilian for almost 15 mintues.

All this because I'm a relatively young guy who was driving a nice car a little too fast.

the dignified history of the FBI

[nido]

... there was an article recently on mises.org on the FBI's "great tradition" (GWB's term). I don't know that I want those people protecting me from olympic park bombings (they did that one real well...) or tracking me down for imaginary crimes.

"If you're not a criminal you have nothing to worry about" - famous last words. See this story.

Not getting caught

[Katravax]

Okay, how many of us, if we were inclined to do something illegal and talk about it or plan it via e-mail, would send messages Carnivore can see anyway? I don't think the criminals are that stupid, at least not those Carnivore puports to be searching for. I would also think the FBI would brag about any collars they made, in part, because of Carnivore. So where are all the terrorists they've captured?

I think that Carnivore is another attempt at monitoring where a scare tactic was used to get it implemented. It doesn't work on those it's intended to work on, but works fine for those that should not be monitored.

Re:mmm... cookie...

[sphealey]

"Do you have any idea how strict the regulations are regarding intelligence collection and dissemination? Do a little research and you'll find out that someone working for the government can go to jail for a very long time for collecting information illegally"

Sort of like the Detroit police department? While what you say is technically true (a) the perp would have to be discovered (b) the crime would have to be reported (very unlikely due to the "code of silence" in all tight-knit professions (c) management would have to take action {see (b)} (d) the action would have to be prosecuted.

I do see the need for law enforcement, and I do respect the job that most law enforcement officers carry out.

Unfortunately, the power inherent in law enforcement is so, well, powerful, that when it is abused the results are very bad for the victim. And I am afraid there are quite a lot of documented abuses (Richard Nixon, J. Edgar Hoover, and the IRS anyone?).

Ahem...

[GMontag]

Ahem... actually, I did read the article. What portion of it do you *assume* that I missed?

BTW, the title that I submitted was "DCS100 aka Carnivour goes wireless!"


"The Washington Post Tech Section is running this story FBI's 'Carnivore'
Might Target Wireless Text.


Humm... can't be that part...

Apparently, since the industry can't provide big brothering to the satisfaction of the FBI the FBI will will do it *for* them.

Was not a quote from the article, it alludes to the industry itself saying that it can not meet a 30 Sept. deadline for providing eavesdropping services to the FBI.

This is a collector's item too,
with no mention in article of DCS1000 being used to "save" children!"

Perhaps you saw a "save the children" refrence that I am still missing?

Why so much anger towards Carnivore??

[Sarcasmooo!]

I mean, hello!? Carnivore saves furry little kittens. The real question is; why do Slashdotters endorse the virtual torture and murder of innocent little replicas of a baby kittens??

could??

[canning]

Civil liberties advocates and some lawmakers have expressed concerns because the system could scan private communication about legal activities of others besides those under investigation.

Could scan? Could? It hasn't already? They say this like it's an option that can be turned on or off.

Oh, they're geeks? Nevermind! Carnivore is OK!

[Chris Burke]

I wouldn't mention this except that some might not get it, but the subject above is sarcasm.

Seriously. Why should it make me feel better that the people who are using this system understand technology? What difference does that make, exactly? As far as I'm concerned, that just makes them more capable of committing abuse.

But maybe you're implying that geeks are morally superior beings who would never do anything bad. Which I agcree with. Because no geek has ever done anything like try to lock out competing programs through incompatability, create huge databases tracking customer behavior, or prevent people from exercizing their fair-use rights. Or build nuclear weapons, for that matter. Oh, geeze. There I go being sarcastic again.

It's okay, because it's geeks? Sorry, but I don't buy it for a millisecond. Because I know how this works. Let me ask you a quick question, which I will alert you in advance is to test whether you are a hopelessly naive person with no grasp of human nature:

The geek you speak of is sitting at his Carnivore terminal tracking communications by a suspect when his manager walks up to him and says "We haven't gotten anything from this guy's email yet... Can you expand your search to include these neighbors, aquaintences, and relatives? And this unrelated person we think might be dirty." Does the geek answer:

A) "No, sir. That would be both illegal and immoral"

B) "Yes, sir!"

Hint: The answer is the same as when the geek is at MS and the manager asks "Do you think you can break Samba's compatability in the next release?"

Re:Camera!

[Bonker]

Ok...bad joke.

Not really. I think it was funny, and sociallpertinent, especially since I too have a Sony camera and made that connection.

You might as well call the Smith and Wesson 'Peacemaker' a "SWP 45002", and see if it gets quite the same reaction. Better yet, lets call illegal wiretaps "IWS90210's" and see if they get as much attention as they deserve.

Let's call a spy a spy, shall we?

Fool or Troll?

[Chris Burke]

Seriously. Which are you?

In one sentence, you say you hope Carnivore can stop school shootings. In another in the same paragraph, you say you think they'll only search the emails of people for whom they have a warrant.

Do you see the problem? Even if the school shooters were sending out emails with the subject "Re: Upcoming massacre of our peers" (ludicrous in and of itself), the email would never be found because the FBI wouldn't have a warrant for a couple of school kids who as of yet had done nothing wrong! The only way they'd find it was if they were searching _all_ email for keywords. So to get your supposed benefit, they will be looking at your data.

The price we have to pay for safety? No. No. No. I'm sick of explaining. If you want safety, turn your house into a fortress and never let yourself or your kids venture outside. Leave me and my rights alone.

Not only random hackers, but also the FBI?

[iabervon]

Didn't we just hear that wireless security was broken and an exploit published? I'm all for limits on law enforcement, but it's a bit silly if some guy driving by in a car can monitor your network, but the FBI can't...

The issue with carnivore is that it will be put at ISPs on parts of the network where most people can't listen; for this reason it can invade privary, and thus requires a court order (in theory). But wireless networks can be passively sniffed without any government powers, so it's much less of an issue.

Re:The next step

[crucini]

I think that any crypto built into hardware sold to consumers will be deeply flawed. So far, this has been true. The crypto is too strong for the casual hobbyist, but easy for the government to crack. You mention 802.11 encryption. Recently, researchers at AT&T implemented a previous theorized attack that allows a notebook computer to penetrate 802.11's WEP (wired equivalent privacy) crypto.

Eventually they will get smart enough to make crypto that isn't obviously flawed. The flaws will only be visible to those in on the secret. This is called 'red threading'. Anyhow, the fundamental problem is that making chips is hard and expensive, and chips are opaque to users. Chip makers are very vulnerable to pressure from government agencies. However, so far I don't think they need much pressure - industry associations keep standardizing on bad, flawed cryptosystems.

Re:Challenges of Wireless Security

[crucini]

I don't understand the tradeoff between bandwidth and encryption that you posit. When you feed cleartext through a block cipher, the result is roughly the same size (rounded up to the block size, typically 8 bytes). If you use a stream cipher like RC4, the encrypted product is the same size as the cleartext. So encryption won't make a 14.4 link any slower.

Maybe you're talking about public key encryption used to establish a session key? I don't think it's enough to really impact your bandwidth.

Re:Not with WAP

[camusflage]

WAP uses its own encryption. When dealing with most web servers, it's SSL from the server to the WAP gateway, then it's WAP security from the gateway to your client. Oh, you too noticed that it exists unencrypted on the WAP gateway? And this is decent encryption how?

"miniscule"??

[Gorimek]

Are you not aware that the FBI under J Edgar Hoovers 48 years as it's head was practically controlling the federal government of the USA? Mostly through blackmail, but also intimidation and murder.

Hoover spied on everyone and had incriminating files on pretty much every politician that could end their career, which enabled him to rule Washington.

That is not "miniscule" in my book.

Remember that those not aware of history are condemned to repeat it.