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CNN Sunday Morning

`Carnivore' Allows Government to Monitor E-Mail

Aired November 04, 2001 - 08:41   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.
MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN ANCHOR: You may not have heard of Carnivore. It's a computer program used for online surveillance. Government officials call it a necessary tool in the war against terrorism. Critics say it smacks of Big Brother, snooping where the government should fear to tread.

CNN's Joie Chen has more on this Internet search for terrorists.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOIE CHEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The program is called Carnivore, and FBI -- the FBI is now using Carnivore to sweep the Internet and to look for any online communication between suspected terrorists. This all came up because it is believed that Osama bin Laden did use the Internet to try to communicate with his terrorist cells in all parts of the world. In fact, may even have used it to plan the September 11 attacks.

To help us understand Carnivore and what it can do, Daniel Sieberg of CNN.com joins us here.

Dan, we've developed this animation to help our viewers get a better picture of what Carnivore is supposed to do, and I guess what it has done. The basic idea is that you might go from computer to computer. Say this is your computer, and this one is mine, and you're sending me e-mail through an Internet service provider.

DANIEL SIEBERG, CNN.COM: Exactly. The best way to think of it is it's like an e-mail wiretap. Once the FBI has obtained a court order -- and the court order has to specify exactly which two people they're going to be looking at -- they can then set up this computer -- Carnivore is the computer, or DCS-1000, as the FBI calls it -- and it is capable of looking at the different packets of information that go between two people. And e-mail is broken up into packets when it goes out onto the Internet. And Carnivore is able to look at that information, and then they can assess it again later.

CHEN: All right. So there Carnivore has seen it. And then, essentially, we've used a camera to sort of depict it taking a picture.

SIEBERG: Right, exactly. The next step -- what -- it's done very surreptitiously. People don't know when Carnivore is being used between these two people who are sending their e-mail. So what they do is they take a copy of the e-mail, of the information, and that is what they use to look at later.

CHEN: All right. And the later part is this: The copy is then served up either into a file for further examination, or the officials say they can put it, effectively, into the trash.

SIEBERG: Exactly. If it's something that they're not supposed to be looking at -- if it's not part of the court order -- the idea is that it would be thrown away. And the information that they need, that's part of this court order that they've received, is what they would be looking at.

Now this is where some of the privacy concerns may arise. Some of the privacy advocates claim that Carnivore pulls too much information, that the filters on it may not be as effective as the FBI claims it would be.

CHEN: In terms of what the FBI is able to ascertain by using Carnivore, how much information can it get? I mean, can it read the whole text message?

SIEBERG: Again, that actually goes back to the court order. Depending on what the court order specifies, they can look at the "to" and "from" or the subject line, and possibly the full e-mail. Now, part of the problem is if the e-mail is encrypted in a certain way, Carnivore may not be as effective. People can also forge where their e-mail is coming from and try to fool Carnivore that way. There are a number of ways where it may not be as effective as they hope it to be, certainly.

CHEN: It also seems, though, that the FBI would need the cooperation -- whether tacitly or -- I mean, it would require the cooperation at least of the Internet service provider.

SIEBERG: Exactly. And this is another point to bring up. In most cases, ISPs have the technology that's capable of doing what Carnivore does. And so a lot of times the FBI will just allow the Internet service provider to use their technology to get the information. Some of the smaller ISPs, for example, may not be able to do this, and so that's when the FBI comes in and sets Carnivore up on their system.

CHEN: Well hang on a minute, then. That tells me -- you're telling me that there's an FBI way to do it and a lot of the ISPs -- the big ISPs, I guess, can do it. That means, couldn't I be subject to this already, today?

SIEBERG: Well, it would depend, I guess, on whether or not you're involved in a criminal investigation. And if they're looking at you specifically, they wouldn't tell you. So, yes, it would be -- it could be done without you knowing for sure.

CHEN: The future of this -- does it envision, for example, getting into more of the encrypted things that might be sent with other e-mail?

SIEBERG: I think they certainly hope so. Right now Carnivore is limited to looking at information that isn't encrypted. Or, if they can, they haven't told me about it. I've spoken with the FBI a number of times. They may have ways of getting around e-mail that is encrypted.

But right now it looks, again, at the packets of information that goes out and reassembles that to be a complete e-mail once they've got it back in the office.

CHEN: Just one other thing I wanted to ask you: How long has the FBI been able to use this, and what has it produced as a result?

SIEBERG: Well, I've spoken with the FBI a couple of times, and they wouldn't confirm with me how many times it's been used since September 11. Previous to that, they've used it probably dozens of times, it would be fair to say, in criminal cases, in counter- terrorism and hacking; in a number of different cases when they need to get that information out of somebody's e-mail. So it certainly has a number of uses.

CHEN: Daniel Sieberg, CNN.com...

(AUDIO GAP)

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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