Miami Herald
August 20, 2000

CARNIVORE SHREDS OUR PRIVACY

J.C. Robbins is a freelance writer based in South Miami.

Imagine a world where legal privacy protections have disappeared, and prying eyes can see every e-mail you send, every Web page you browse and every document, photo and file you download. Sound scary? Well it is already happening. Enter Carnivore, an aptly named computer hardware device developed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Carnivore hooks up to your Internet service provider (ISP) and scans every incoming and outgoing communication, prowling for telltale pre-programed buzzwords. Suspicious information is forwarded to law-enforcement agents.

Carnivore can also track your instant messages, chats and visits to Web pages. That is how the system got its name - from its ability to find ``the meat'' among millions of electronic transactions. The system has already been deployed at dozens of ISPs. The FBI admits that it has been used around 25 times, but the agency has big plans to satiate Carnivore's voracious appetite.

The mere prospect of a system like Carnivore should frighten Internet users. The big picture of the FBI possessing an all-seeing eye should terrify people. Carnivore is a needless measure that lacks safeguards and violates our right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. It should be kept off the Internet.

``They are just trolling; fishing for information. And obviously, if they cast a wide enough net, they're going to catch some fish,'' says Mitch Halmu, a spokesman for Netside Corporation, a Miami-based ISP. Carnivore's potential for abuse is enormous, and its design makes safeguards impossible to install.

The FBI answers these concerns with two words: Trust us. Carnivore is used only after ``rigorous review,'' wrote the FBI's John Collingwood. He said that the agency will not stray beyond the confines of its authority and will isolate individual suspects.

Although I am sure most FBI agents are honest, professional and dedicated crime fighters, it is unwise to give the agency the carte blanche trust and confidence that necessarily accompany use of electronic sniffing systems like Carnivore. Doing so would elevate them to godlike status on the Internet.

Ordinarily, one way to check the menacing threat of Big Brother is to require law enforcement to obtain warrants before conducting searches. In this case, however, search warrants are a practical impossibility. Since Carnivore must scan every communication on a network to find its meat, each scan, however inconsequential, constitutes a search. And since warrantless searches are presumptively illegal under the Fourth Amendment, the FBI would have to get a warrant for each of the thousands of Internet users whose information passes through Carnivore's electronic teeth.

Even if warrants were a practical option, they would fail because of another well-settled legal requirement: They must be particular, stating precisely what it is authorities are looking for. It is just another safeguard to prevent situations and police methods like the one the FBI is proposing.

Carnivore is a needless measure, say ISP managers, who claim that when ordered by a court, they readily turn over relevant information without compromising the rights of innocent customers. ``If we were subpoenaed and had to give up particular information, we would,'' claims Rich Lee, president of MPI.NET, a Florida ISP with 65,000 members in the state.

That scenario materialized for the owners of Netside, says spokesman Halmu. They have voluntarily complied with three subpoenas since 1995. What's more, Halmu argues that systems like Carnivore can be easily abused, since the FBI installs, maintains and controls it without any meaningful supervision.

If voluntary compliance does not make Carnivore unnecessary, new software does. Waltham, Mass.-based Authentica announced that it already has developed an encryption product that will protect Internet users.

Sophisticated users have had access to encryption tools like Authentica's for years, a fact at odds with the FBI's contention that Carnivore is a useful tool to fight against a new breed of high-tech criminals. ``Criminal elements in that environment are most of the time a little smarter than government bureaucrats,'' says Harald Kegelmann, CEO of Florida Digital Turnpike, another Florida ISP.

So with most sophisticated cyber-criminals eluding Carnivore's jaws, who's left?

Probably the perpetrators of so-called victimless crimes. I'll put my money on the fact that Carnivore's bite out of crime will consist mostly of identifying buyers and sellers of pornography, sex and miscellaneous contraband, not terrorists, as the FBI's Collingwood predicted.

If installed at your ISP, Carnivore could also remain online for years. ``They could leave it there for 10 years,'' warns Halmu. That may not be much of an exaggeration in view of a recent wiretapping case in which a federal judge ruled that a two-year bug on a suspect's phone was not excessive and did not violate the Fourth Amendment.

Even more mystifying is that the same government that today brings us Carnivore yesterday conceded that identical systems, when deployed by private firms, crossed an inviolable zone of privacy. Last month Doubleclick was one of several Internet mega-marketing concerns to recant on plans to track and log individual Internet users' buying habits. The New York-based company did so after a Senate committee and the Federal Trade Commission vowed to regulate the industry. The system, like Carnivore, would have permitted the company to monitor almost all communications and transactions online.

Our e-mails today are yesteryear's personal papers. Electronic communications shuttle and store our most intimate thoughts and cherished images. For some, our e-mails even contain our ``deepest, darkest secrets,'' says Halmu. Historically, our laws have recognized the principle that this information deserves the most rigorous legal protection from the prying eyes of the government. As one judge wrote over 200 years ago, in a case widely read by the framers of our Constitution, ``papers are the owner's dearest property; and are so far from enduring a seizure, that they will hardly bear an inspection.'' Any other rule would be ``subversive of all the comforts of society.''

Carnivore stands starkly at odds with this important and admirable legal tradition, and the FBI should keep its ravenous new toy off the Internet.