Slashdot Mirror
FBI Accidentally Received Unauthorized E-Mail Access
AmishElvis writes "The New York Times reports that 'glitch' gave the F.B.I. access to the e-mail messages from an entire computer network. A hundred or more accounts may have been accessed, rather than 'the lone e-mail address' that was approved by a secret intelligence court as part of a national security investigation. The episode was disclosed as part of a new batch of internal documents that the F.B.I. turned over to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit the group has brought."
Seriously. What's the story here? Some sysadmin who apparently didn't know what he was doing put the wrong thing in his e-mail server configuration and inadvertently sent all e-mail for the entire domain instead of e-mail for one address.
Mistakes happen all the time. The appropriate thing to look for is whether the mistake was caught and corrected in a timely fashion. It seems that the mistake was caught and corrected in a timely fashion which basically makes this a story about an everyday occurrence.
This story might make a good one for some sysadmin journal reminding sysadmins to document policies that help ensure mistakes do not happen and if they do are caught by the company itself instead of by the FBI. For example, a simple procedure would be to check the appropriate logs after changing the configuration to make sure the configuration is doing what it was intended to do.
In my previous job I accidentally granted myself access as a domain administrator, not believing it would be so incredibly easy to do. That was grounds for firing, though they hung on to me, after I showed them I could also reset the passwords for anyone in the company using their in-house password utility.
The FBI will have no fear of any such consequence. Illegally overstepping their bounds and then saying "oops" is about all you'll hear about this ordeal. I'm sure some calls for investigation will be made and someone might have a dispassionate speech on C-SPAN and then it will all be swept under the rug. It might even pave the way for the FBI to request this type of access for the future if they can "prove" that it's in the interest of "national security".
You're nothing; like me.
"There have been so many executive orders, bending of laws, etc. that just about every form of government access to information is authorized by something."
Sounds fine on Slashdot, alt.politics groups, or black helicopter chat, but in reality you can't even try to go in with that position as a prosecutor. Even a conservative judge will hand you your ass.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Such a "secret court" is a good thing, because it provides the appearance of judicial review for actions that would otherwise not be subject to judicial review at all.
Fixed that for you.
Check out the denial records of that court since the 70s. That should tell you just how detailed the FISA rubber stamp looks at those warrant petitions.
just about every form of government access to information is authorized by something.
I think what the GP meant was that there would be some sort of quasi-official authorization. Along the lines of making all of the evidence classified beyond the judges level to ever see the it, or some kind of DHS gag order + infinite postponement of the trial. Simply a classified letter from an FBI big telling the prosecutor or judge not to pursue the matter any further might work just fine. The is a fair amount of risk in challenging it, a risk many people would not like to take. I'm sure there are ways for the security portions of the government to be technically "cooperating" but never actually have to really answer to a judge. There are parallels to this kind of behavior where the politically powerful simply refuse to comply with the law and seem to be getting away with it.
We are all just people.