Internet Surveillance: Recent U.S. Developments

Congress revisited the issue of Internet surveillance days after the September 11 attacks when the Attorney General presented draft legislation addressing " new surveillance authorities; " the USA Patriot Act developed from this proposal. The executive branch of the Federal government has since pursued a number of policies and strategies dealing with Internet surveillance and data mining. Many of the difficulties surrounding the question of Internet surveillance center on the analogies between Internet surveillance and telephone surveillance. Are these analogies appropriate; and if we accept that there is a place for telephone surveillance in law enforcement and intelligence activities, does Internet surveillance or data mining naturally follow? Carnivore (DSC 1000) Carnivore is a Microsoft Windows based system developed and used by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation that directly connects to an ISPʼs server. The FBI draws analogies from telephone surveillance to describe the Carnivore system. Carnivore is used in two ways: as a " content wiretap " and a " trap and trace/pen-register. " A telephone " content wiretap " is where law enforcement eavesdrops on a suspectʼs telephone calls, recording the oral communications on tape. Carnivore provides analogous capabilities for e-mail, capturing all e-mail messages to and from a specific account or all the network traffic to and from a specific IP address. " Trap and trace " technology tracks all caller IDs of inbound telephone calls, while " pen-register " tracks all outbound telephone numbers dialed. Similar functionality for e-mail consists of capturing all e-mail headers (including e-mail addresses) going to or from an e-mail account, but not the actual contents. For other forms of Internet activity similar functionality consists of listing all the servers (web servers, FTP servers, etc.) accessed but not capturing the content of this communication, tracking everyone who accesses a specific web page or FTP file, or tracking all web pages or FTP files that a suspect accesses (Independent Technical Review of the Carnivore System; Final Report, 2002). Earthlink Carnivore first came to public attention through a February 4, 2000 court decision. An Internet service provider, later identified as EarthLink, questioned the legal authority of the court to issue an order requiring the installation of a " device which captures the time, date, source, and destination of electronic mail (e-mail) messages sent to and from an e-mail address maintained by a customer at the ISP. " The court found that it had the …