FBI and Justice Department attorneys and technicians on Monday defended the e-mail monitoring system Carnivore before highly skeptical House Judiciary Committee members by telling the lawmakers that the controversial surveillance system is not as invasive as they believed.
"Despite its unfortunate name, [Carnivore] is a surgical tool," FBI General Counsel Larry Parkinson told the House Judiciary Constitution Subcommittee. "The reaction that it is deployed without proper authorization is not the case." The FBI said that the tool records only e-mail addresses, not content or subject lines, without a warrant granted by a judge.
Under development for nearly two years, Carnivore has been used by the agency 16 times this year-10 national security cases and 6 criminals cases, none of which have come to trial-and 25 times total, said Donald Kerr, director of the FBI's lab division.
The system can obtain the full content of a suspect's e-mail when law enforcement officials have a judge-issued search warrant, Kerr said. But it also can be configured only to record e-mail addresses under "pen register" or "trap and trace" court orders, which are lower-standard court orders that have normally been used to obtain the list of phone numbers received and called by a suspect.
Although House Judiciary Subcommittee Chairman Charles Canady, R-Fla., said that agents' testimony had satisfied some of his concerns, the full committee's ranking member John Conyers, D-Mich., and subcommittee ranking member Mel Watt, D-N.C., expressed additional concerns.
Watt argued that the FBI lacked the authority to obtain e-mail addresses. But Kerr responded: "We do in fact have legal authority to do what we are doing today, because of my perspective that addressing information on Internet is analogous to the telephone number in the switching circuit world."
Additionally, FBI agents who abuse the system to obtain more information than legally authorized are subject to fines and a five-year prison sentence, said Kevin DiGregory, Justice Department deputy associate attorney general. He said that the Carnivore deploys cryptographic algorithms that permit law enforcement supervisors to detect if it is tampered with-either by Internet Service Provider employees or lower-level FBI agents.
House Republican Conference Chairman J.C. Watts, R-Okla., issued a press statement calling Carnivore a "dangerous and unprecedented invasion of online privacy. From unwarranted wiretaps to its mishandling of hundreds of files on political appointees just a few years ago, there is ample cause for concern."
Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., also expressed concerns about possible privacy invasions.
"While it's important that law enforcement keep up with technology in the digital age, it is incumbent upon us to remain vigilant against further possible invasions of individual privacy. Carnivores are typically known for eating their prey either sparingly or judiciously. I'd rather it ate like a bird."