Return-Path: Date: Fri, 8 Aug 1997 14:59:59 -0700 (PDT) From: Declan McCullagh To: fight-censorship-announce@vorlon.mit.edu Subject: FC: FBI's bug rules sting basic freedoms, by Will Rodger Sender: owner-fight-censorship-announce@vorlon.mit.edu Reply-To: declan@well.com X-Loop: fight-censorship-announce@vorlon.mit.edu X-FC-URL: Fight-Censorship is at http://www.eff.org/~declan/fc/ ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 08 Aug 1997 17:32:47 -0400 From: Will Rodger To: Declan McCullagh Inter@ctive WeekAugust 8, 1997 FBI's Bug Rules Sting Rights Groups By Will Rodger
3:00 PM EDT
EXCLUSIVE A new FBI wiretap policy threatens basic constitutional protections against illegal surveillance, leaving next-generation telephone and data networks open to abuse by overzealous law enforcers, civil libertarians said. "The FBI has complained for years that digital technologies and new services were making it harder to carry out wiretaps," said Jim Dempsey, senior staff counsel at the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT). "It is now finding the technology may provide law enforcement with vastly increased surveillance powers." The FBI policy is complex. But the upshot, critics said, is simple: Wiretaps that required a show of probable cause and a hearing before a judge could soon require no more approval than the stroke of a U.S. attorney's pen. And magistrates who once relied on technology to rein in police could find it impossible to stop excesses in the wiretap process. The trouble is rooted in the rapidly emerging tendency of telephone companies to put regular telephone traffic on low-cost Internet links instead of traditional phone networks. In traditional phone networks, information about the origin and destination of a call is sent separately from the call itself. That is not the case with packets of data sent on the Internet. They contain both address information and the content of the call. Thus, investigators who want to trace only the origin and destination of calls would have access to the entire phone conversation. Federal law requires judges to authorize requests to trace calls on demand. But full-blown wiretaps that monitor actual conversations require police to show probable cause for concern before judges grant authorization. In the case of the Internet, a corrupt or unwitting U.S. attorney could allow agents to engage in massive wiretapping under the guise of ostensibly harmless "trap and trace" orders. The CDT and Electronic Frontier Foundation are expected to ask the Federal Communications Commission to intervene to keep the FBI from implementing its plan. Separately, the American Civil Liberties Union is expected to attack the plan on similar grounds, plus at least a half dozen other areas in which the ACLU believes the law deficient. FBI officials said critics have it backward. If new technology threatens privacy, telecom and Internet companies may have to rethink which technologies they implement instead of looking to the FBI for answers. "The law specifies capabilities carriers need to have in their networks," FBI spokesman Barry Smith said. "It's up to the carrier to determine the best solution." The FBI can be reached at www.fbi.gov The CDT can be reached at www.cdt.org 
Will Rodger
Washington Bureau Chief
Inter@ctive Week
A Ziff-Davis Publication
http://www.interactiveweek.com
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