CDR: E - mail Surveillance Tool Vindicated

[anonymous at openpgp.net]

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Chicago law school dean who reviewed the FBI's controversial e-mail surveillance tool said Monday his report concludes it works the way the bureau described and generally doesn't ``overcollect'' evidence as feared by privacy advocates.

On the eve of the Justice Department's release of his review findings, Henry H. Perritt Jr., dean of the Illinois Institute of Technology's Chicago-Kent College of Law, said the report contains recommended improvements to the Carnivore system -- both for efficiency and privacy -- that likely won't be made public Tuesday.

``I think that it's fair to say that it does pretty much what the FBI says it did. For the most part, it does not overcollect. There's certain recommendations as to how it could be improved,'' he said in an interview with The Associated Press.

Perritt declined to list the recommendations or how Carnivore sometimes overcollected.

Privacy advocates were alarmed by an FBI lab report last week stating that Carnivore ``could reliably capture and archive all unfiltered traffic to the internal hard drive.''

The FBI said that the lab report was the result of a test to determine Carnivore's ``breaking point,'' and that laws and court orders restricted Carnivore from being used so broadly. Privacy advocates, however, said the test shows that Carnivore is more powerful than the FBI has stated.

Perritt said the FBI was ``completely open and cooperative'' during the review.

Justice spokeswoman Chris Watney said Monday that the Carnivore report was received last week, and will be made available to the public Tuesday.

The intervening days, she said, were needed to black out parts of the report that mention Carnivore's internal blueprints and other sensitive information. The recommendations probably will be held back as well, Perritt said.

Carnivore was designed by the FBI to collect e-mail going to or from a suspect, in cases where a suspect may be using electronic communications. Privacy experts have worried about the breadth of Carnivore's capability and its ``black box'' nature.

Shortly after IIT was chosen to perform the review, ordered by Attorney General Janet Reno, critics said the review would not be independent because the reviewers were government insiders.

``This important issue deserves a truly independent review, not a whitewash,'' House Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, a longtime Carnivore opponent, said in October.

Perritt advised President Clinton's transition team on information policy and performing other tasks for the Clinton administration, as well as previous Republican administrations.

Associate Dean Harold J. Krent, another member of the team, worked at the Justice Department in the 1980s, and several team members have current or former security clearances from the Defense Department, Treasury Department or the National Security Agency.

Perritt repeatedly affirmed that he was completely independent, and that his reputation would be damaged if he was anything but impartial.

Most of the nation's elite academic computer departments -- including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Purdue University and the San Diego Supercomputer Center -- either declined to review Carnivore or withdrew their applications after objecting to the requirements the Justice Department placed on the review.

The bureau says Carnivore has been used about 25 times, mostly involving national security.

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On the Net: Federal Bureau of Investigation: http://www.fbi.gov

Department of Justice: http://www.usdoj.gov

Chicago-Kent College of Law: http://www.kentlaw.edu