Cheaper Carnivore Alternatives Still Want To Spy On You

Troodon writes: The Register reports on Forensics Explorers' NetWitness. Rather than relying upon the FBI's 'fail-safe' separation of Carnivore Operators and Case Agents to discriminate between legitimate data and that inadmissably, incidentally siphoned up along with it and submitting to the installation of a mysterious black box within their network, ISP's can comply with CALEA in-house for approximately $2,500 per collector and between $35,000 and $45,000 for an analysis station. Should you fancy a little development, another cheaper alternative exists: Altivore." Not sure any of this is much comfort -- the lesser of two evils is still evil.

Comments

I beg to differ

[serps]

Not sure any of this is much comfort -- the lesser of two evils is still evil.

There is quite a difference between Carnivore's 'log everything on the server and ask questions later' approach and that of NetWitness. If you are an ISP and forced to comply with the Feds, I know which program your other users would rather have on their pipe.

It won't matter

[YIAAL]

The WTC bombers communicated in the clear, because no one knew enough to intercept their stuff.

You have to know who to spy on before this stuff does any good. That takes Intelligence. And intelligence.

Both are in short suply.

Court-approved access is Not Bad (TM)

[Twylite]

A lot of civil liberties proponents lose the plot at some point, and viciously attack any attempts at monitoring or interception. While I'm all for screaming blue murder about wholesale invasion of data and privacy, there is a point at which the state investigatory power that be require legitimate access to communications.

No, this would not have stopped Bin Laden & co, who communicated in public. Nor will it stop many related activites. But it is extremely effective against fraud and crime syndicates. I come from a country where these crimes are rife, and most convictions follow some form of search warrant.

The dividing line between good and bad is the inclusion of the court system into the process. Courts can already give permission for physical searches and wiretaps, subject to the provision of prima facae evidence. This is good.

Enough evidence must exist to convince a court that there is likely to be a crime, and that a particular person/group is likely to be implicated, before such a warrant will be issued.

There should be no difference for digital communications. Wiretaps could be used along with equipment to translate the wire signal into packet data, but this is inefficient. Just a telecoms companies are obliged to cooperate with the police (FBI), so ISPs, arguably the carrier for TCP/IP based data, should be obliged to cooperate (although not necessarily at their own cost).

When it comes to encrypted communication, the lines blur a little more, but only a little. You can be prosecuted for refusing to acknowledge a search warrant, or for refusing to testing (except in cases involving the Fifth Ammendment; and many countries don't have an equivalent), or for withholding evidence; so you should be able to be prosecuted for not providing the cleartext to an encrypted communication and, if necessary, proving it is a decryption of the ciphertext.