CDR: Re: Carnivore Probe Mollifies Some

[Peter Tonoli]

I've been thinking about Carnivore for days. I can't really see the data
that it collects/spews forth being anywhere near uncontestable.


On Tue, 28 Nov 2000, Tim May wrote:

> At 5:48 PM -0500 11/28/00, David Honig wrote:
> >At 06:54 AM 11/28/00 -0500, Ken Brown wrote:
> >>Of course if they leave the machine [Carnivore] in the cage you can always
> >stop
> >>feeding it electricity. Or take it home to show the neighbours. It might
> >>make a good conversation piece at dinner. Or maybe use it as an ashtray.
> >
> >>At 10:36 PM 11/27/00 -0500, Tim May wrote:
> >>CALEA has some onerous language in it, but it doesn't trump the
> >>Fourth Amendment.
> >
> >
> >You could try the Carnivore box against an implemention of your Second
> >Amendment rights.  Unless the chassis were hardened you'd win.

These are probably obvious points but..

Is Carnivore going to be simply a software/OS specification, or all round
including hardware? What's to stop the provider being in collusion with
whoever's being monitored, and 'unplugging' the UTP whenever sensitive
data is being sent out? Worse still, what's to stop spoofed packets/data
being injected (by your friendly law officers) into carnivore to
incriminate those being monitored. Likewise, is there some sort of
protocol to on similar situations (well same ball-park), say
voice-wiretaps, that prevents evidence tampering?

Is there some sort of specification for this thing, or was the so called
research performed on this thing done under complete NDA?

> Generally, I hope CALEA/Carnivore gets challenged all the way to the 
> Supreme Court.

I don't see how it holds up in any court.

Peter
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