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Dartmouth Student Invents A Carnivore Leash
timdorr writes: "Looks like a student at Dartmouth wants to turn Carnivore into a much more resonable tool according to this Wired article. I'd personally feel a lot less invaded if I knew the system was in place and in this form. Hopefully the government takes notice becuase Carnivore still seems like quite a loophole for our government to exploit."
Great, just what we need- something comes along to make the public think it's perfectly okay for the government to monitor email. I don't care how secure it is, I would still rather have no government monitoring at all than even a system that would guaranteed not to be prone to abuse.
The Wired article didn't go into too much detail, but I can see a couple of potential problems here..
- how exactly does the FBI (or whatever) specify *what* they're looking for? Searching for "all traffic containing the keywords TERROR, BOMB, COCAINE and OSAMA" sounds like Carnivore as is, and would be pretty easy to defeat anyway. Anyone remember "The Longest Day", in which the Allies sent messages re: the date of the D-Day invasion over clear channel radio, using a code based on a Rimbaud (I think) poem?
- the data vault might hold the FBI/NSA/whoever to their warrant, it does nothing about intentionally vague/overreaching warrants or the laws that enable them.
- re: using this system to keep medical/financial/etc. info private: Hardly a catch all solution, the data vault can't stop companies from spreading/selling your info after you've given it to them in confidence.
- If these do become commonplace, how long before a bungled police investigation results in evidence being lost because of one of these things self destructing? And once that happens, how long until they become outlawed?
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I guess, for me anyway, the irony here is that a single student did this. Not the FBI or any other agency/department of the government, but a private citizen had to come up with a way to harness and focus the power of Carnivore. I know the FBI probably could have done so themselves, or any other company/corporation, but they didn't. Never underestimate the power of the individual.
...we are from the government - we are here to help...
The problem is the people have huge misconceptions about Carnivore. Being concerned about personal privacy, I chose to research Carnivore for an Ethics class at school. I found that Carnivore is pretty much just misunderstood; it is really incapable of doing any large-scale surveillance. There's an independant review that was conducted by IITRI last year that points out that Carnivore is the safest of any online monitoring tool and that it is incapable of wantonly collecting data. Incidentally, the report suggests that Carnivore be open-sourced. Fat chance.
The real issue is whether or not it's right to perform surviellance. I think that it can be necessary at times (with the required warrants) but I also think that it needs to be taken more seriously and greater restrictions need to be in place to ensure that it is only used in extreme situations. If you think that Carnivore could invade your privacy, read up on how many wiretaps are used every year. Carnivore is used much less and is safer to boot. The real problem here is whether the government should be allowed to monitor communications at all, not that Carnivore gives the government some awesome new powers of data capture.
njord
By the way, I really have no association with the government. I'm just a left-winger college student that did a little research and was surprised by what I found.
Simply take them to their logical end.
The fact that Carnivore exists, in any form, indicates that the government wants access to all your communications, to know exactly what it is you're saying and hearing.
This modified Carnivore is an attempt to claw a way back up the slippery slope when you've already hit bottom.
You're only real options are either not to say or do or listen to anything the government might find objectionable, or encrypt all your communications.
668: Neighbour of the Beast