Just Carnivore (was: Yahoogroups and Carnivore)

Stafford, Todd Todd.Stafford at wwireless.com
Tue Sep 18 00:23:10 UTC 2001


> Supposedly Carnivore only targets specific kinds of traffic and doesn't
> really monitor everything at once.  It's not like (again, supposedly)
> Echelon that examines everything and then red flags certain items.
> Carnivore is only looking for certain things.  Also, there is no outside
> access to it.  Someone has to physically come in and remove the mass media
> (what ever that may be: more than likely a hard drive).

Afraid I'd have to say that in this instance your conclutsions are
inaccurate.  For more information, see the FBI's Carnicore site at
http://www.fbi.gov/hq/lab/carnivore/carnivore2.htm

> Let's see, I want to send email to someone but I want it to be completely
> anonymous.  I go to safeweb.com or any other anonomizer and get myself a
> hotmail address.  I then send it to the recipient with PGP encoded text.
He
> logs on to hotmail through anonomizer and retrieves it, decodes it and
reads
> it.  If I was really smart I'd bounce around a couple of other proxies
while
> I was at it.

Again, check out the above link.  Your idea of going to an anonmizer would
be useless as Carnivore scans the traffic directly from your ISP.....before
it ever gets to the anonmizer.  Granted, encrypting your message before ever
logging onto your ISP and then sending it via it's encrypted format would
prevent it from being read in cleartext but considering what Congress is
proposing, the sending of encrypted messages could be just what the FBI
would need to start looking deeper into your life.

> Carnivore? Toothless!

No breach or attempted breach of one's civil liberties is
toothless....especially the right to privacy.



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