posted August 03, 2000 12:24 PM            

U.S. District Judge James Robertson gave the FBI 10 working days to say when it would start rolling out records under "expedited" Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) processing.

David Sobel, general counsel of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, or EPIC, hailed the order as a "very good result." He said it indicated the court planned to supervise the FBI's production of documents.

In an application to the court, EPIC had accused the FBI and the U.S. Justice Department of breaching the law by failing to act on a request for fast-track processing of its FOIA query about the snooping system.

But at the opening of the hearing, Sobel said he had received a fax 90 minutes earlier in which the FBI and Justice Department granted the "expedited" treatment at issue.

In so doing, assistant U.S. Attorney Lisa Barsoomian told the court the FBI planned to make the documents available "as soon as practicable."

Robertson, responding to a request from EPIC, said he would consider 10 days a reasonable definition of what was "practicable" in the matter. He ordered the FBI to let him know by then its timetable for starting to meet the FOIA request.

In July, the FBI told Congress Carnivore is designed to intercept data from the electronic mail of a criminal suspect by monitoring traffic at an Internet service provider. EPIC and the American Civil Liberties Union, fearful that its use may violate Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure, want the FBI to spell out how it works.

Attorney General Janet Reno said last week that technical specifications of the system would be disclosed to a "group of experts." Sobel has argued that there is no substitute for a full and open public review of the Carnivore system.

"Unless the public gets access to relevant information, we will not have a fully informed debate on these issues," he said in a telephone interview on Wednesday before the judge granted an emergency hearing on the matter.

EPIC filed its initial FOIA request on July 12. Six days later it asked the Justice Department to expedite the pending query on the grounds that it had become a matter of exceptional news media concern raising questions about "the government's integrity which affect public confidence" -- one of the legal standards that qualifies a request for "expedited processing."

Although Carnivore reportedly "sniffs" or scans all traffic at an Internet Service Provider once it is installed by court order, the FBI says only the data or messages relevant to a criminal investigation get stored and reviewed.

All other information it sifts through is discarded, Donald Kerr, director of the FBI lab that developed Carnivore, told Congress at a July 24 hearing.

Some lawmakers suggested the tool may infringe on the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, which protects Americans from unreasonable search and seizure.

posted August 03, 2000 05:51 PM            

I figure the FEDS can have all the e-mail scanning software they want. In fact I can give them some of my own network monitoring tools for free. It however wont do them any good, because I ENCRYPT my e-mail with PGP. I honestly believe anyone that doesn't take proper security measures to ensure their privacy, should not get upset when their privacy gets comprised. This also goes to alot of my fellow juicers out there...

If you use the computer to get juice or what not. Secure the data so the FEDS wont look at it. Often times the first thing the FEDS will do besides raid your house and search through all your shit is haul your cpu away. With various technitions and tons of "un-deleting hardware" it isn't that hard to un-remove files that were deleted many many days or years back. Encrypt your shit so when they un-delete the file, they will only see encrypted ciphered text. From my FBI friends mouth "Nothing pisses us off the most then information that can't be used!"

Hindustan