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American Morning

Government Officials Call Computer Program Carnivore a Necessary Tool in War Against Terrorism

Aired November 02, 2001 - 09:53   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: The Justice Department this morning is confirming reports of an antitrust settlement with software maker Microsoft. But attorneys generals from 18 states still have to sign off on the deal. One computer program Microsoft does not make is called Carnivore. Government officials call it a necessary tool in the war against terrorism,, while critics say it smacks of Big Brother, snooping where the government should fear to tread.

Joie Chen joins us from the CNN Center in Atlanta with more this Internet search for terrorists.

Good morning, Joie. Good to see you.

JOIE CHEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Paula. Thanks very much.

This has hall come up because investigators do believe bin Laden used the Internet to communicate with his terror network, perhaps even plan the September 11th attacks. Now the FBI is using its online surveillance program Carnivore that you referred to, to try to locate any terrorists who might still be using the Web.

Daniel Sieberg from CNN.com joins us here now to help us explain what Carnivore is, and we want to go ahead and look at the animation that our folks put together to understand what Carnivore does and how it works.

DANIEL SIEBERG, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Sure, absolutely. This may give people a better understanding of what it does, because it is a very technical program obviously.

CHEN: Well, there it is, and let's imagine that these are two computer terminals, yours and mine, and you are sending me e-mail, effectively, through an Internet service provider. Most of us have that, if you have Internet at home. And the idea of Carnivore then is that it can take essentially an interception of what's going through the Internet service provider, is that right?

SIEBERG: Exactly. The FBI needs to get a specific court order, and what they look at is what's called packets of information. When an e-mail goes out over the Internet, it spreads out into a number of different packets of information, and they're looking at these packets. They could contain the to and from of an e-mail, the subject line, and possibly the entire content of the e-mail, and they are gathering this information, trying to assess what's inside.

CHEN: But the important thing there is that Carnivore isn't allowed to be randomly used. There has to be a court order that says, with these limitation.

SIEBERG: Right, it has to be very specific. That's the legal side of it certainly.

CHEN: All right, the concept here then is that not only would Carnivore look at it, but it was essentially take a picture, make a copy of what's coming through.

SIEBERG: Exactly. The idea is that a recipient, or the person who's sending it, doesn't know that this is being done, and so the FBI makes a copy of the information and keeps that as a record of what they've got.

CHEN: Neither the recipient or the source person sending.

SIEBERG: Exactly. It's done very surreptitiously.

CHEN: All right, so then what would happen is the Carnivore takes this picture, and through its system can either put it into a file for more investigation, or effectively, if officials say anyway, that they could throw it into the trash if they decide it's not worth anything.

SIEBERG: Right, and this is where some of the privacy concerns come in. A lot of privacy Advocates say that it is gathering too much information; it is not filtering out certain information, and the FBI is saying they've got specific filters that were put in place, that only look at certain bits of information, whether it's the to and from or the subject line of the e-mail.

CHEN Daniel Sieberg from CNN.com. We appreciate you being with us and giving us a little bit of a primer here.

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