FBI turns to broad new wiretap method:For those of you that are unfamiliar with Carnivore:
"The FBI appears to have adopted an invasive Internet surveillance technique that collects far more data on innocent Americans than previously has been disclosed.
Instead of recording only what a particular suspect is doing, agents conducting investigations appear to be assembling the activities of thousands of Internet users at a time into massive databases, according to current and former officials. That database can subsequently be queried for names, e-mail addresses or keywords.
Such a technique is broader and potentially more intrusive than the FBI's Carnivore surveillance system, later renamed DCS1000. It raises concerns similar to those stirred by widespread Internet monitoring that the National Security Agency is said to have done, according to documents that have surfaced in one federal lawsuit, and may stretch the bounds of what's legally permissible."
Carnivore Redux:
In late 1999, Corn-Revere, a partner at the Davis Wright Tremaine law firm, had been fighting on EarthLink's behalf to keep a government surveillance device off the company's network. A short while later, though, a federal magistrate judge sided with the FBI against the Atlanta-based Internet provider.
Worried about the privacy impact, Corn-Revere revealed the existence of Carnivore in testimony before a House of Representatives subcommittee on April 6, 2000. "They were using a technology called Etherpeek, which was off the shelf," Corn-Revere told me last Friday. "When we challenged it, they said, 'We're not using that. That would be wrong. We have our own software developed. It's called Carnivore.'" (Etherpeek is a Windows surveillance utility from WildPackets that can decode protocols used with e-mail, Web browsing and instant messaging.)Now history is repeating itself. A flurry of press reports this month noted that the FBI has ceased using Carnivore, which had been renamed DCS1000. But not all of them mentioned that the government is hardly calling a halt to Internet wiretaps--instead, it's simply buying its surveillance tools from private companies again.
A review of the government's self-reported wiretap statistics from 2000 to 2003, the most recent data available, shows that the total number of "electronic" wiretaps has stayed between 4 percent and 8 percent of all reported wiretaps each year. (In 2003, for instance, there were 1,442 reported non-terrorism wiretaps in total that intercepted 4.3 million communications or conversations.)
snip...those numbers don't include "pen register" and "trap and trace" devices, which tend to be about five to six times as popular as traditional wiretaps. Those awkward names, which hail from the days of analog phone taps, refer to capturing only the addresses of Web sites visited and the IDs of e-mail and instant-messaging correspondents rather than the complete content of the communication.
Translated: The concept of Carnivore isn't going away. If anything, police surveillance of the Internet is increasing over time.
There is a possibility that this sort of software is what may have brought Krayeske to the FBI and CTIC's attention since it would track and find sources of comments on Blogs. IMHO it is highly likely.
If this sort of illegal surveillance is what brought Krayeske to their attention, it still would not explain the human error of actually taking anything Krayeske has said, written, or done in the past as a sign that he should be on "The List"... Anyone that actually read the full comments refered to as reasons for the abuse of his rights would see that he is just a photo-journalist/blogger/peaceful political activist.
Are there any CT politicians that could ask for the original source of these Federal agencies monitoring Ken Krayeke? My guess is that question will lead back to software controlled "wiretaps" that are inherrantly illegal because of the wide net they cast in surveillance of the internet without any probable cause.
Given the subject matter of this diary... They are probably reading this! What a fuckin' waste of taxpayers' money.
2 comments:
I remember the huge outcry when they first proposed the data collection system. With Clinton in the White House, there was actual concern about Constitutional protections, like the Right to Privacy.
These days, with Clusterfuck Jr. running the show, anything goes no matter how much damage they cause. They keep chip-chip-chipping away at our freedoms.
The biggest problem here is that when these programs get sniffed out by the public/press the government just dismantles the program, changes the name of it, and then starts it all over again.
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