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."

Comments

FISA court: whatcouldpossiblygowrong

[davidwr]

Oh wait too late.

Better cover it up.

Oops, we botched that too.

Unauthorized in today's world?

[russlar]

Can any kind government access be considered unauthorized anymore? 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.

Trust the FBI?

[Frosty Piss]

So they "accidentally" gained access to more than what they where supposed to? Aren't we supposed to be able to TRUST them to stick to what they where authorized to access even if they "accidentally" gained greater access? If we can't trust the FBI, who can we trust?

Re:Trust the FBI?

[techno-vampire]

The FBI will have no fear of any such consequence. Illegally overstepping their bounds

This being Slashdot, I can probably assume that you didn't bother to RTFA before posting, but if you had, you'd have kept your foot out of your mouth. The FBI requested that an ISP send them copies of all email sent to one address at a small domain. The ISP screwed the pooch and sent them all email sent to that domain. The FBI noticed that they were getting way too much email, found out what had happened and corrected it. At no time did they overstep their bounds, because they only asked for what a judge said they were entitled to. I hope this makes enough sense to you that you can remove your tinfoil hat, but frankly, I doubt it.

Headline: Sysadmin fouls up filter

[Jimithing DMB]

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.

Re:What I want to know

[achbed]

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.

Something doesn't fit...

[AnotherUsername]

Something is wrong here...I can't quite put my finger on it...

Wait a minute, that's it!

You're a spy! No self-respecting Slashdotter would willingly still have a Hotmail address! You're one of them!