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The Courts Government News Your Rights Online

Carnivore In Living Color 100

Posted by michael from the in-your-living-room dept.
joel jaeggli writes: "The Carnivore talk done by Marcus Thomas from the FBI at NANOG 20 is now online... you can retrieve it from: University of Oregon Videolab. This talk was meant for a technical audience, and the discussion and questions from the audience are very enlightening. Major thanks should go to the folks from Merit/NANOG for managing to schedule this talk, to Marcus Thomas and the FBI for their candor, and the NANOG crowd for asking the important questions."
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Carnivore in Living Color More

Carnivore in Living Color

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  • what's h.261?
  • to get worse. Carnivore today, omnivore tomrrow.
  • Is it enough? No

    Is it a Start? yes

    Will it really make a difference for privacy in the US? This speech won't but Carnivore definently will be felt for a long time down the rode.

  • ...and never will. Just too sketchy, too much power.

  • I hope you have some serious broadband, because this MPEG movie of the talk is 364 MB.
  • Its a video compression decoder I think (or something along those lines). It is typically used with streaming video.

  • Carnivore, et al., can be beaten. (Score:3)

    by Siqnal 11 ( 210012 ) on Thursday October 26, 2000 @03:56PM (#671867) Homepage
    A simple IP-level auto-negotiating protocol would be enough to stop all passive sniffers, while a few people exchanging their keys using an external channel (physically or maybe via encrypted email) could detect any MITM attack (since a MITM relies in being able to change the keys being used, and it would be easy to check if they don't match). It could protect any protocol, including UDP-based protocols, unlike TLS which can only be used with TCP-based protocols.

    --

  • No thank you. Just put it on VHS and I'll buy it!

    The largest single file to date that I have downloaded was 110MB (Elite Force demo). That took one hour. There is no way that I'm spending 3.8 hours just to download a 54-minute video.

    Seriously, couldn't they have encoded this in DivX? Even though it is frowned upon by the government, it could've reduced the file size even more.

  • does anyone know of any mirrors of this mpg file?
  • Though the definition isn't something I can explain, it's an mpeg format.

    I sorta thought the context of the article made that pretty clear?

    <em>and multicast live in h.261, mpeg-1 and mpeg-2</em>

    Though I guess it isn't obvious.

    The nick is a joke! Really!
  • Just take a look at who you're asking: the U.S. Government. They wouldn't open source the recipe to the Presidential cookies!
  • If I only had something better than my 56k modem to download that movie with. I think that maybe a transcript would help for those who don't have eitheir the time or the high bandwidth to download it. Now on the actual subject of Carnivore. I don't advocate it's implementation knowing what I do about it, yet im not very knowledgable about it. I do know though that it's currently used by the FBI and I hope it isn't implemented on my ISP or I will be getting a call very soon...anyhow I think ill go over to my friends house, he happens to have an 8mbit connection, unlike my poor ass.

  • [OT]: mirrors (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Why can't slashdot spend a little bit of VA's
    cash and get themselvs a good mirroring system/box?
    I think it would be a little more polite than
    foisting crowds of data-hungry slashdotters on
    an unsuspecting site.
  • And then the fearsome herbivores, who open up chain restaurants....
  • Perhaps it would be less menancing if they called it Herbivore, or "big dopey plant eating fellow that doesn't spy on your email". But those whacky fbi fellows and they're need for 'cool' codenames.

    ---
  • umm well you'de hope not, it's all going to be...

    interns.com TRUE / FALSE 1920499140 id 8be836d4

  • Why not just download it overnight? Personally, I'm going to start the download in a couple of hours - I'm at uni the rest of the day so I'm hardly going to notice the lack of remaining bandwidth.

  • Re:A Crack in the Wall (Score:3)

    by Yardley ( 135408 ) on Thursday October 26, 2000 @04:35PM (#671878) Homepage
    Carnivore is one part of the start of a very dangerous trend in the United States of America. It began with the War on Drugs, the middle and early eighties saw the start of routine unlawful search and seizure by government officials and the bribing of witnesses to imprison (often with life sentences) other individuals. Lately, government officials have decided that no communications by its citizens can go unobserved or unencumbered. Complete censorship of entire categories of speech is becoming routine through mandatory "filters" at school, in libraries, and soon at your computer. Now Carnivore. The end of private communications as we know it. Now the government will know that I am the one who wants you to know about what the government is doing & that I think it is wrong.

    --

  • Re:wow, large file (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    this is about as insightful as MY DICK. which you moderators can suck, MOTHER FUCKER©

  • So can phone wiretaps. So what? The point is not that the system is perfect and can never be defeated, it's that it can gather information in the cases where it can. Most criminals are pretty stupid.


    --

  • they don't mirror stuff because it would not only be dumb, but it would mess with advertising systems which are the only way some sites can exist. Also there are a few hundred other reasons involving copyright law. You know MS would sue the pants off /. as soon as they mirrored something owned by Microsoft.
    -------

  • Carnivore vs. dsniff (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Forget open-sourcing Carnivore - just use dsniff [monkey.org]!
  • Use snail mail. Simple and tamper proof. Is that a christmas card to grandma or stealth bomber blueprints, you would never know.
  • The problem with that is copyright issues. Private companies can give big enough headache, imagine the feds getting involved. First they would need permission to mirror the content and then some way to pay for (more banners and more stories with FUD summaries).

  • Re:Carnivore, et al., can be beaten. (Score:4)

    by Yardley ( 135408 ) on Thursday October 26, 2000 @04:47PM (#671885) Homepage
    The FBI is putting a black box between you and the Internet via your ISP. What this means is that your communication passes through this box. The FBI is now the Gatekeeper for whether or not your communication gets out and whether others communication (including the whole wealth of information from the Internet) gets to you. They know what you are looking at, what you download, who you email, chat with, or talk to. They know everything that you do on the Internet. And now the FBI also gets to decide if it wants you to have a connection at all.

    Yes, people will say, no, that's not what the FBI is doing. They're just putting a black box in at every U.S. ISP so that they can monitor certain people's communications only after receiving a judges signature (by the way, in California the DEA has a deal under the law which allows them to no longer get a courts permission when phone tapping people accused of dealing drugs -- they can sign the warrants themselves). The FBI says they will use this technology sparingly. They say it's for our own good.

    Do we really need our Internet communications being monitored? I think not.

    I for one do not want a technology in place (at my taxpayer expense) which allows the government the ability to shut down the entire Internet at a moments thought.

    --
  • do you think they removed the link because lawyers asked them to (aka, slashdot is now ok with censoring something if a corporate lawyer asks them too) or because the server admin said, "help a brother out, don't link to us" or because the server admin blocked downloads that were referred to by slashdot?
    --
    Peace,
    Lord Omlette
    ICQ# 77863057
  • and believe it or not, the government actually respects information sent in meat-mail form! Calling all terrorists! The US is actively helping you out, just send stuff by normal mail and your privacy is guaranteed by the very people you are trying to overthrow (or something)!!!
    Damn, i hope they don't get any bad ideas out of this post...

    -Elendale (I'm thinking of sending '1984' or 'Farenheit 451' to gov addresses with the subject 'plans to bomb washington' or something equally ominous)

  • Is it the FBI having this box, or is it in how they use it? Quite frankly I could survive without knowing the technical details behind the box, I want to be sure that it's being used properly...
  • According to an article at Yahoo.com, it was recently revealed in an internal Microsoft document that the reason Bill Gates resigned his position as Microsfot CEO was that he wanted to spend more time posting so-called "FUD" comments on the popular internet site slashdot.org.

    checkhere. [slashdot.org]

    Netscape runs just fine. I'm much more a sadist than a machochist. Coinicidentally, this talk is purty kewl - its actually got screenshots of carnivore running.

  • Carnivoring MPEGs (Score:3)

    by juliao ( 219156 ) on Thursday October 26, 2000 @05:19PM (#671890) Homepage
    Living outside the US, I have still followed the Carnivore debate with interest, since a lot of my traffic does go through US-Govt-controlled networks.

    So the Government wants to have access to whatever "bad elements" send over the network. But will they ever be able to do it? This isn't voice we're talking about, this is data. Any "bad element" can encrypt it and make it unreadable by Govt officials in any useful timeframe.

    And the Govt knows this, so clearly this isn't their objective. So what is? Mass scanning of John Doe's traffic? Must be.
    Now let's look at their own site. An MPEG. How do you mass-scan MPEG files for BadThings(tm)? How do you mass-scan JPEGs? I'd like to know other people's view on this.

  • I am really stupid tonight, but I couldn't seem to find what CArnivore stood for in any of the links, anyone care to share?
  • A sysadmin in New Zealand emailed and said that all of the Akamai downloads were coming from their Akamai servers... It seemed pretty rude to have a zillion people in the U.S. sucking data from New Zealand.

    Now, the question of why Akamai's network gave me a link to a New Zealand server when I first looked at the trailer from New York City, well, that's one for another day. Obviously Akamai's system for picking servers "near" to people needs a little work.
    --
  • The party is more important than the man (we don't elect a dictator). Economic freedom is #1. Vote Republican.

    Is that the kind of thinking which Republicans for Bush are reduced to? My God that's pathetic. How about this: The people are more important than the party OR the man... Personal freedom is #1. Vote Green!
  • You honestly thought they wanted to let you see what they're up to? Back to the salt mines, prole.
  • Why on Earth do you care what your karma is? If Rob knew any better he would simply make it invisible to everyone so they stop playing these foolish games. It's a meaningless number not some score on who good a poster you are.
  • There is unlawful 'search' and seizure.
    I wonder how far the U.S. thinks it can bend our rights.


    Ignore the Anonymous Pissant trolls !!!
  • You know, If slashdot had posted the above msg instead of "Sadly, we've been asked to take down the direct link to the file. "

    You know, for a multi-million dollar website, slashdot is not the most responsive...

  • Mirror (Score:1)

    by clay ( 13382 )
    Gimme 30 minutes. I will mirror. Url to follow

  • Personal freedom is #1. Vote Green!

    You want personal freedom, therefore you advocate voting for Socialists? Here's a hint: socialism and freedom are mutually exclusive.

    It's posts like this that make me wonder whether people actually look at what the parties believe.


    --

  • What do you mean nothing happens? What happens is the score of the article so readers will find such a valuable comment easily, which is the whole point of the moderation system.
  • Argh think I need some sleep, lets try that again:

    What happens is the score of the article is increased so that readers will find such a valuable comment easily. This is the whole point of the moderation system, to give scores to comments NOT to users.

  • mirror (Score:1)

    by clay ( 13382 )
    Anytime after 0100 Central you can grab a copy at
    ftp://vec.mellender.org/pub/nanog-20-carnivore-u pdate.mpg Sorry for delay, best I can do.
    Clay
  • wait until 0100 central, get it at
    ftp://vec.mellender.org/pub/nanog-20-carnivore-u pdate.mpg
    Sorry for delays, it will take a while for this big puppy

    Clay
  • You spelt "fearsome" wrong, it's "lesbian".
  • be nice if somebody made a transcript available

    i'm wondering if anybody asked about the free and open source reimplementation of carnivore, or like, why does carnivore have to be a locked down hardware box that only the fbi has access to? maybe they just want to sell hardware?? uhuh.

    security through obscurity is my guess. in which case somebody will steal a box, or obtain illegal access, break the undoubtedly flimsy security (why else would they need to hide it?) and obtain the ability to bypass carnivore, or poison it, and not tell anybody, except perhaps the terrorists that are funding them.

    if they want to do this i'd rather see an open competition like the AES selection process.

  • beep beep beep -- this HTTP link is being monitored by the FBI -- beep beep beep

    that'll slow those terrorist bombers down

    beep beep beep -- this HTTP link is being monitored by the FBI -- beep beep beep

    i wuzn't gonna say anything about my neighbor makin' hootch in his basement, anyway..

    beep beep beep -- don't even THINK about using encryption -- beep beep beep

    I'm startin' to get used to it already, fnord.

  • Freedom is #1. Vote Libertarian.
  • There is unlawful 'search' and seizure. I wonder how far the U.S. thinks it can bend our rights.

    Yes, and there is such thing as a search warrant. Many of them are even justified, based on probable cause. In such cases, the FBI needs the tools to get the right information.

    We should certainly worry that they are abusing their power, or that some black hat will subvert the technology. But you cannot expect them to do their jobs without access to modern tools.


    My mom is not a Karma whore!

  • Yup ... I'm a machochist OK. I arrived at the link without any video capapbility and I decided to remedy that.

    About 5 minutes later I clicked on the .mpg link and watched a long video at 640x480 ... pretty cool really.

    Yes I do like my cable.

    So I had to grab one set of binaries and one set of source code, link the binaries to the path, make the source, link the binaries to the path and click on the .mpg link ... about three min really.

    Damn this Linux thing sure is tough alright.

    Did you notice how the far left panel in the 1.3.whatever Carnivore was never gone over...everything but that. Looked like stuff to control archieving. Brought back memories of w2k I ran for a while to cause I built a bunch boxes that needed to dual boot. Not what I want in an OS that's for sure. Ugly clunky thing, slow too. Ah well to each his own.
    CC

  • They have to get the judge's approval and all that, for a warrent. Hopefully there will be a tool released soon that will allow us, the user on the network, to sniff out a carnivore box, and if possible, block it, or use encryption to not allow the box to understand what your doing. I think the main question is, will the FBI abuse this new tool?


    Ignore the Anonymous Pissant trolls !!!
  • Well, I don't mean to be redundant or to flame VA for not mirroring things, but would some folks post a few mirrors? =)
    I tried to set one up but after 30 tries I still couldn't get onto the FTP. Hope someone else is having better luck!
  • The US government has no interest in its citizens (and pretty much everyone else in the world) using hi-grade data encryption. The NSA, the Skipjack algorithm, the Clipper chip, lawful key escrow requirements, the PGP trials... For instance, CDMA's "encryption" scheme is an RFI-minded (as opposed to security-minded) 42-bit stream cipher, whose keys are exchanged through insecure channels. Still, I've been told by engineers that the system is "pretty much unbreakable". Yeah right. But who'll implement public-key cryptography in wireless communication when there's government pressure to allow them to listen to your (supposedly private) conversations?

    Apart from the NSA itself, which employs very good cryptologists (and probably a couple of Deep Crack machines... or is it a couple hundred?), the infrastructure for intercepting communications is there (*cough* Digital Telephony bill *cough*). Perhaps the plot from "Enemy of the State" isn't too absurd after all.
  • See, the great thing about america is is that we all think we have our own opinions, but ultimately our opinions don't matter... doesn't that make us all feel incredibly special?
  • You don't get it. The whole concept of hundreds of millions of people instantly communicating across all national and political boundries without any form of government control, has government goons the world over scared to death. The more the people of the world communicate and work out solutions to their problems, the less relevent politicans are. Pretty soon the only thing they will be needed for, is to make sure the roads are paved and the trash gets picked up. Our beloved government as well as many others will use all manner of excuses (protecting children from the evils of an unregulated web, consumer protection, national security, war on crime, drugs etc.) to get their collective claws into the web. Even the U.N. is starting to get into the act. If you allow them to develope technology like carnivore and actually deploy it we are in deep trouble. Unless there will be a watchdog looking over the shoulder of every government employee with access to a computer there is no way to control how this software is used. The only time they have to prove they used this software legally, is if they wish to use the information they gather as evidence in court. If they are going to use the information for some other purpose they can slap a Top Secret clearance on it, use it, then drop it in the old burn bag and it's gone forever without a trace. As good netizens we have to do everything in our power to activley resist any attempt by any government to control the web. Coders need to be writing a carnivore killer right now. A nice little bug that locates carnivore, tracks it back to it's home machine and simply destroys that machine. You must remember that the best brains in the high tech world don't work for governments. Most of them work on the web so it's not a question of whether or not governments can be stopped from grabbing control of the web. The only question is, how bad you have to hurt them before they see the error of their ways.
  • ....

    but please be nice, will ya:

    http://mirror.swma.net/carnivor/nanog-20-carnivo re-update.mpg

    If you blow the box I blow the file ;)

    Michael
  • I agree. They probably are going to abuse it.
    The U.S. gov lies about everything. There is no
    telling really.


    Ignore the Anonymous Pissant trolls !!!
  • You make it sound humorous but think about it in a different light. Lets say you are emailing a friend and you are critical of your boss. Your boss just happens to be a major contributor to the party currently in power. A few weeks later you suddenly start getting hasseled on they job or just plain get fired. You can't figure out why. Politicans often use govt. resourses to look out for the interests of their friends. Lets say you are frequent slashdot contributor who is critical of many govt activities. Your criticism starts to hit them a little to close to home. Suddenly you find the IRS paying a little more attention to your tax return. Your son gets turned down for that R.O.T.C. scholorship he seemingly had in the bag. Your parents social security checks keep getting lost or shortchanged. Your brothers company on the other side of the country looses that big government contract they thought they had locked up. Beep Beep, you've just been eaten by the Carnivore
  • I'm getting it from you right now. Did you compress it down to 148M or it is not all there yet?
  • And this is precisely the point I've made before. The REALLY bad people will be using some form on encryption, and when the encryption is broken it will be a code, like: " The groceries came in, meet me at Joe's."

    The really, really SMART bad people will be even more sophisticated than that.

    No, Carnivore won't be used primarily against terrorists, any more than phone taps are now. Mostly it will be used against the average dumb Joe selling some pot or other contraban.
  • You can already use encryption to defeat Carnivore. Assuming there are no holes in your encryption software and you private key is secure, the government isn't going to be reading your encrypted email anytime soon. (Unless you believe the reports that the government is using UFO technology taken from the Roswell crash site, in which case there's not a whole lot you can do, aside from wearing a tinfoil hat.)
  • and another. whoo, that's big! http://www.stonehenge-net.com/carnivore.mpg [stonehenge-net.com] is a t1, hopefully the sysadmin at school won't kill me for this :) (hi ryan)
  • hmm... somehow i ended up at the bottom of the karma pile, so i'll try again. mirror here: http://www.stonehenge-net.com/carniv ore .mpg [stonehenge-net.com]
  • Jesus, what are you, twelve years old? Are people's memories that short, that they can even put the word "republican" in the same _sentence_ with "personal freedom"?

    Freedom to what, stripmine national parks? Beat flag-burning hippies to death? Throw away millions of dollars in other people's savings gambling away the entire contents of your S&L, on junk-bonds & blow jobs?

    Or maybe you're just talking about the more prosaic freedom to make of billions of dollars producing completely useless high tech whim-whams, eg the Star Wars system?
    That's not personal freedom, it's corporate freedom. they're kinda different.

    Yeah, it's true, democrats suck. They're nearly as bad as republicans, what with continuing the insane War on Drugs & the whole general atmosphere of constant surveillance it's led to. But, you've got to get your shit straight about this "freedom" word you're throwing around.

    Republicans have always, in principle, been fiscally conservative (as long as you're rich, you should pay fewer taxes/get more Corporate Welfare/ etc.) But- they've also always been *socially* conservative-- which means, you're free to be as much like a straight white middle class suburban male as you'd like, but if you differ in any way from the percieved norms, you're completely fucked.

    I can't believe that anybody who'd lived through any Reagan-Bush, or had even _heard_ of Nixon (who was & will always be the prototypical Republican, to me- I find it safer to regard them as Evil than Stupid) cd espouse such views, that's why I wonder if you're too young to know better.

  • What's the right right? (Score:3)

    by kfg ( 145172 ) on Thursday October 26, 2000 @09:06PM (#671924)
    Most people are thinking of this as a first ammendment right, and it is in one sense, but the REAL right at issue here isn't the first ammendment, it's the fifth:

    You have the RIGHT not to give evidence against yourself.

    Prior to actual charges being filed you have the RIGHT to protect yourself in any way possible from intrusion into your affairs. You may encrypt, code, obfuscate, and outright destroy anything you want to, for any reason. It is your RIGHT to have it assumed that all such actions are innocent of any wrong doing. You have a RIGHT to be secure * against government intrusion * into your papers.

    Once charges have been actually filed you have the RIGHT to * shut the hell up. * This right to shut the hell up includes the right not to tell them your password, not to give them any key codes, the right not to tell them where you hid stuff, the right not to give a statement, the right not to utter one single blessed word. Speak ONLY to your lawyer.

    Use your rights. Encrypt everything. Your laundry list. Your cat's birthday. Your phone conversations. Everything. Use as much personal jargon that will be meaningless to anyone but the intended recipient, ( which could be noone but yourself), as possible. Learn to use steganography and encrypt and code things before you embed them. Use assorted DIFFERENT encryption and encoding techniques.

    Destroy everything that is of no more use to you. Don't just delete, destroy. Everytime you reinstall an operating system write 0's to the entire HD first. Eat memos. Just because you now have the power and the space to document your life in exquisite detail dosn't mean it's a good idea. Keep your house, real and virtual, squeaky clean. Throw away old phone bills. Throw away all financial records that current law, ( unconstitutionally), does not require you to retain. Throw away all reciepts except for those things that you WISH to be able to prove ownership of. When I say throw away I don't mean throw away or shred, I mean BURN.

    Use cash. They hate that. They're making it illegal by bits.

    If called before a grand jury or civil court where it is currently held that the fifth ammendment dosn't apply get a really, REALLY bad memory. Repeat after Reagan. " I don't recall, I don't recall, I don't recall."

    These are your rights, use them or lose them
  • Millions of people communicating simultaneously is no doubt a great benefit of the 'net. The FBI have every right to spy on suspected drug dealers etc over the net. I could care less if they read my mail; I have nothing to hide. Let them slap Top Secret on it; Do I care if they know I downloaded porno over the net? Nope. Hell, I hope they like my selection and add it to their personal bookmarks. The reason I don't give a shit what the FBI does with my mail is that I don't do anything illegal. The FBI hunts criminals, and since I am not one, I have nothing to fear.

    But I am afraid of you. The views you espouse in your post show that you are only a few steps shy of being involved in the next Waco, Ruby Ridge, or Columbine. I can only hope that when they do come and get you, for whatever it is you're doing that you don't want the FBI to see, that they don't hesitate and that they don't miss. The FBI exist to protect people like me from people like you. I like that.

    BTW, the best and brightest minds are not working on the web - they're working for the military. On weapons. Isn't it great to know that our nations best minds are busy right now contemplating a more complete and clean means of mass and self destruction?
  • Breaking the box won't help you if they use asymmetric keys I mean RSA. In order to read the messages from the box, you would need to steal the key at the other end (FBI), or brute force it. They also would want to add a signature to everythign they transfer, I guess.

    However, things will get really funky once the FBI key or the NSA backdoor key(aka "key recovery technology") will be broken - all the documents that were deemed secure will suddenly become readable.

    Historians, Peeps, ARCHIVE NOW, and read later.

  • So the Government wants to have access to whatever "bad elements" send over the network. But will they ever be able to do it? This isn't voice we're talking about, this is data. Any "bad element" can encrypt it and make it unreadable by Govt officials in any useful timeframe.

    Ever heard of traffic analysis? You can extract plenty of useful information out of monitoring encrypted messages.

  • 1. If you send email or even complain verbally about your boss, well, you deserve to get fired. Just because you have a first amendment right to say whatever you want, doesnt make it prudent, politically wise, or good for your job. Think, 'toopid. Your right to express yourself at anytime doesn't mean you always have to express yourself. Focus on what your boss does right?

    2. If you can follow a EZ form that most middle schoolers can read, and you actually paid your taxes, and you didnt embellish anything on the 10-40 that you knew was really false (its just a white lie...) anyway, what do you care if the IRS pays a visit? One of the fun things about following the law is that when things like that happen, you can slam it down their throats. There's nothing like getting pulled over for a traffic violation, arguing with the cop because he's an idiot, proving you're right, and then speeding away without a ticket. But I digress...

    3. Your son doesnt make it into the army. Trust me, you don't want your son in the army anyway.

    4. First off, its loses, not looses. So your brother loses his contract. See what happens when you run your big f*cking mouth. But thats the political game. Policitians either scratch each others backs, or stab each other there. Not a secret, not a surprise, not necessarily right, but thats the way it is.

    5. So you ran your big mouth, your rectum got audited, and your brother is out some potential money. See what happens when you open your pie hole? But look at what else happened. The FBI caught that guy, just down the block from you, the one who would be molesting your daughter right now, only he's in jail, getting molested himself. And they caught those two teenagers, who go to that same high school where your son lost his scholarship. Theyre in juvy now, cuz they were planning to blow up the school.

    Carnivore really sucks. That is, if you are not a good, honest, positive, can-do, hard-working person. Those bastards have it easy, because they have nothing to fear.
  • No, they don't. Go read the 50 USC 1801, the Foreign Intelligence Survellience Act. They don't respect *anything* when it comes to protecting National Security.
  • > 'd like to know other people's view on this

    I beleive it is a switch. The can silence anyone in a fraction of second.

    Don't like the content of that web site ? Blam, 404 not found.

    Wanna shut down this individual ? Blam, connection failed.

    Wanna slow down the connection of someone, suppress its ability to go somewhere ? It ability to send mail to someone ? To recieve a confirmation of its emails ? Just a couple of clics away.

    There are other things, like monitoring:

    Wanna know who connects to this info ? Wanna know what this guy internet pattern use is [Which sites, how often, who he mail to, who he receive mail from] ? Wanna know who, in the people that had communication with him, have a similar pattenr use ? Clic, clic, clic. Done

    Very usefull for threats, too. Wanna get this guy receiving illegual material ? No problem. Now he is officialy on underground illegual mailing lists, its browser went to a couple of illegual sites (If your HTML pass via my machines, I can do very neat things).

    And, well, with the info you grab, it will be a very easy game to crack its machine if needed...

    Sure, Carnivore won't do that now, but I bet it'll be used for that in a not-so-far future.

    Cheers,

    --fred
  • Everytime you reinstall an operating system write 0's to the entire HD first

    Good start, but definitely not sufficient. You can find tools for secure deletion at secutiryfocus

    http://www.securityfocus.com/templates/tools_categ ory.html?category=73 [securityfocus.com]

    Cheers,

    --fred

  • ... and that were just the first two discs of Debian 2.2. Well, at least I had a dedicated PC for this so the download didn't stop when some silly game crashed my main machine... *gg*
  • My question is, "What percentage of wiretap search warrants ever generate evidence that is used in a real criminal prosecution, and how has that percentage changed in recent times?"

    From what I've heard, the number of actual wiretaps is going up, while the number of times those wiretaps actually contribute to a prosecution is going down.

    In fairness to law enforcement, the mere fact that the number of wiretaps is going up is not in and of itself a bad sign, since the amount of communications is going up. However, one would hope that the ratio of (wiretaps that generate evidence used in a prosecution)/(wiretaps) would be holding constant or increasing. From what I've heard, the actual ratio is plummetting - the government is fishing more and more, and getting less and less for it.

    I believe that the government should be required to place a specified time limit on any wiretap warrant (time <= 6 months), and at the end of that time either
    1. prosecute a case and present the data from the wiretap, or
    2. go to the individual tapped, inform him of the tap, and present to him the data gathered in the tap (and destroy all other copies of the data).

    This would force the government to be more careful in selecting targets to tap. As it is now, if "Murry the Snitch" says I'm selling drugs (because he's on the hot spot and needs to give a name, any name, to the police), and they tap me for a few years and find nothing, then they quietly bury the data without so much as a by your leave. If they had to present to me the data so gathered, and the source of the information leading to the search warrant (does "the right to confront your accusor" ring a bell?), then I could (hell, would) bring suit against the the law enforcement agency involved as well as "Murry".

    Of course, this has about as much chance of being passed into law and enforced as freezing a pot of water by placing it on a hot stove.
  • The FBI is putting a black box between you and the Internet via your ISP. What this means is that your communication passes through this box. The FBI is now the Gatekeeper for whether or not your communication gets out

    My understanding is that Carnivore is a packet sniffing device that is attached to a network, but does not act as a gateway. It is capable of listening to everything on the segment, but cannot alter the information. (And I agree that trusting the FBI with that much snoop power is a strong motivation to use GPG on your email.)

    http://www.gnupg.org/ [gnupg.org]
  • MPEGs are cool, but does anyone know where I can find a transcript?
  • Echelon reputedly covers every square foot of the planet intercepting all forms of electronic communication. It makes anything the FBI's budget can come up with look like a Speak 'n Spell.

    Because Carnivore is totally domestic (there's no "wink and nod" agreement with the Brits to spy for us to make it "legal", like Echelon) the discussion should be on the class action lawsuit ISP users should file to stop its use or to disclose the full capabilities of it in its current incarnation.

    I believe the Digital Telephony and Wire Act made government backdoors into new comm technology a requirement, but the net was already old tech when that was passed.

    Domestic spying is illegal, and a buck from every user on a major ISP would be enough to fund the legal procedings to force the government's hand on this. They work for us, and they must prove that everything is above board.
  • how ironic they would link warez copies of IPTV to show a tutorial on a program designed to monitor the movements of people who host warez (or as the FBI calls them "intellectual rights terrorists"). http://videolab.uoregon.edu/iptv_license.html
  • pretty rude? what about linking to a site without even warning them that you're going to send hundreds of thousands of hits their way? where the hell is the non-rudeness in that?
    --
    Peace,
    Lord Omlette
    ICQ# 77863057
  • hehe, Roswell, I like that. But ya, you could do it in some manner, using software, or VPN might get past it. VPN might, im not all that familiar with it, for i havn't used it, but if carnivore can monitor VPN, then that would probably be a concern amoung some companys.


    Ignore the Anonymous Pissant trolls !!!

  • Yeah, what's your point? I've read it before. One of the most frightening and oppressive documents I've ever read. Proving, of course, that socialism != freedom.


    --

  • Jesus, what are you, twelve years old? Are people's memories that short, that they can even put the word "republican" in the same _sentence_ with "personal freedom"?

    Congratulations, you have bought into every cliche the Democrat party has ever made. Nope, my memory is not short. Are Republicans perfect? That would be a big N-O. But they are infinitely preferable to Democrats. All freedom begins with economic freedom, and Democrats are anti-economic freedom.

    You mention Nixon, but curiously neglect to mention Clinton. In my mind, Clinton is far, far worse than Nixon. The difference is that Clinton never got caught with enough evidence, except for preying upon his female subordinates.

    why I wonder if you're too young to know better.

    Again, no, I've been around the block a few times. On the other hand, perhaps you haven't mentally evolved beyond the 60s "flower" mentality. I'm reminded of the old saying: "If you're young and Republican, you have no heart, if you're old and Democrat, you have no brain." So true.


    --

  • And job would that be? Let's look at the FBI record of work experience.
    • Wen Ho Lee - the nabbed the wrong guy, and US Nuclear secrets are who knows where.
    • Richard Jewel - atlanta bomber still on the run
    • Unabomber - alluded them for over a decade, until his brother turned him in.
    • World Trade Center bomb - went off
    • Waco - 79 people burned to death

    In NYC, when the police are walking around the streets, crime goes down. When the police drive around in cars all day, the crime goes up.

    Maybe the FBI are incompetent because they sit in front of computers all day in Washington DC. They could do more undercover operations, which were quite successful in bringing down the mafia. They could leave their offices. But that would be dangerous, wouldn't it? Far better to hide scared behind a computer and monitor everyone's communications.

  • IPTV is not warez. It is distributed under cisco's revised iptv 3.0 client liscense. any customers of the UO (people who want to view the video via iptv) may download and install iptv 3.0. please refer and questions about iptv 3.0 from the UO to multicast@lists.uoregon.edu [mailto] thanks joel jaeggli
  • Carnivore really sucks. That is, if you are not a good, honest, positive, can-do, hard-working person.

    I'm a good, honest, positive, can-do, hard-working person. I also smoke marijuana in my free time. Unfortunately, this small act which causes large amounts of personal satisfaction (and stress relief from all that can-do, hard-working) is considered to be criminal behavior by the powers that be -- Not because of its inherent dangers. Not because of damage it does -- but because it is politically viable to keep it this way.

    As a morally upstanding individual, how do I reconcile my own desire to pursue my right of freedom and happiness with the desire of my government to be my mommy?

    I don't want the government looking over my shoulder no matter what. It's not what they are or aren't doing with the system now, but the potential for abuse that has most of us up in arms.


    -The Reverend (I am not a Nazi nor a Troll)
  • This will be nice when their FTP server comes back up... I've got 50 ms ping times to UO :-)
  • There are two r's in carnivore, thought maybe the "r" stood for something meaningfull like reconnaissance. Of course then I tried to do something with the 'a', aardvarks strictly speaking are carnivores, but I doubt the FBI has much use for them as they are strictly a warm climate critter :)
  • LOL! Very funny -- you can't possibly be serious. Or do you perhaps suffer from some sort of intellectual disability.

    1- I suppose that if you politics don't square with your boss's that should be grounds for firing too. Or if you worship a different god. Or your skin is darker than his. To paraphrase your earlier statements, you're walking proof that your right to express yourself in no way means that you have an opinion worth sharing with the rest of the world.

    2- "What do you care if the IRS pays a visit?" You've got to be kidding me. The IRS is one of those few people who can casually say, "You owe us $20,000. Pay us now or go to jail. If we made a mistake we'll let you know in 4-5 years, after you've spent $150,000 in legal fees".

    3- relevance? Actually that's true of your whole post.

    4- see 1.

    5- Look at what else happened... your son is in a federal lockup being raped daily by big burly men because he sent a friend a question about smoking pot. Your daughter has been fired from her job because you opened your big yap and your whole family's blackballed, so she has to sell her 17-year old body in the streets to make ends meet. Meantime everytime you drive down the street there's a cop on your tail ready to bust your tail lights and arrest you for it.

    You strike me as the kind of guy with a $5000 PC and a $0.25 head controlling it.

    Carnivore is really lovely... that is, if you're a mindless drone willing to goose-step to the dictates of the latest presidential edict. Those idiots have it easy, because they don't have minds to make up for themselves.
  • How do you scan video or voice?

    I don't know. However Echelon does it, I guess.

  • I think the theory you're alluding to, that goverments are going to be made obsolete by the Internet, is a tad reductionist and just plain ridiculous. Ever heard of the USS Cole? Hmm...to hell with the US intelligence/military, I'll get my ICQ buddies together to crack that case. Remember that little genocide incident awhile back in the Balkans?...would we just spam Milosevic to death to make him stop or what?

    Like it or not, there's are thousands of hard working Americans within our government whose job it is to give people like you the freedom, prosperity, and peace-of-mind it takes to sit around all day dreaming up your bizarro fantasy world. "But there are bad people in the government!" you say. Yes, that's nice. We've heard that countless times before and I think we all understand that. THERE ARE BAD PEOPLE OUT THERE. Let's all acknowledge that, and move on with a little less talk and a little more action.
  • The FBI exist to protect people like me from people like you. I like that.

    So what'choo goan do when dey come fo' you?

    Seriously. What happens when you let a government steadily encroach on the rights of its citizenship? The end result is a police state, where thinking against the party line (see the USSR about 10 years ago) is punished swiftly, severely and in many cases, permanently. Once that happens, what will *YOU* do if the people who make it into power don't follow *YOUR* ideology? What will you do when *YOUR* private activities become the "problem?"


    -The Reverend (I am not a Nazi nor a Troll)
  • Wen Ho Lee - not a bad man by any means, but he admits he *did* illegally downlaod nuclear secrets for his personal use. Not an evil thing to do, but not a legal one, either.

    Richard Jewel - absolutely wrongly accused. Saw a TV special on him during the Olympics. He's living a very happy life now as an Atlanta cop. No harm, no foul.

    Unabomber - yup, he was hard to find.

    World Trade Center - they definitely fucked up. They had prior knowledge it was going to happen; they could have prevented in. Still doesnt mean the FBI set the bomb.

    Waco - 79 people who were loco killed themselves. Yummy, there's nothing like Koresh-kabobs.
  • You admit you smoke pot. Last I checked, pot use is illegal in the US. YOU ARE AN ADMITTED DRUG USER. Yes, you should be afraid of the FBI.
  • At least I'm not a complete moron. :) Try reading the words I type and then applying a little common sense and REASON... and see if you can't discern just a little tiny piece of what my *POINT* was.

    Thank you, drive through.


    -The Reverend (I am not a Nazi nor a Troll)
  • I'm writing this as I watch the mpg, a few points I've noticed:

    • I really love the fact that the average bandwidth has come so far that we can just send around 300M mpeg's of these things. YAY!
    • The FBI guy doesn't really seem that technically competent, for instance one of the slides mentioned not storing the "re:" and "subject:" lines... Hmm, did I miss an rfc? I don't recall the re: header... Also, he didn't know email addresses were case-insensitive, no biggie but you'd think someone close to carnivore would know that.
    • Pity they couldn't have gone a bit higher res, non of the computer screens where readable.
    • Does anybody know an mpeg-player for linux that shows a time-index in the controls (apart from mtv). Gtv is great, but only gives framenumber, which isn't even relative to the start of the mpeg but to the point where you started playing it.
    • For some reason he seemed to be trying to avoid the 'only gather addresses' mode because he thought there would be a lot of disagreement about how much it could gather. Isn't bringing that into the open the entire idea of this thingy?
    • a large part seems to consist of explaining how a packet filter works. Fun, but not what I wanted to see...
    • They've demonstrated how carnivore can filter to very specific rules, so not to collect anyone elses traffic. I haven't however heard how many of the court orders allowing carnivore use so far have specified any of these filters, or which ones....
    • All irrelevant data is discarded, and sealed and locked away. Why? Why not just log that data from from was discarded, and wipe it, giving better chances of privacy for those not involved?
    • In the demo they have a webinterface is used. This uses a form, which implies a cgi (could be javascript, but unlikely), which implies a webserver. That implies a webserver is running locally. Seems to be a) slightly overkill b) a security risk if the webserver is malconfigured, ie somebody could connect to it remotely.
    • On the public: This is a really cool bunch of geeks, I love em. I want to take em home...
    • As far as sniffers/parsers go, carnivore/coolminer seems pretty nice stuff. I want! Could the person who got into microsoft please nick this stuff from the fbi and put it on geocities? A port to linux/bsd (X11) would be nice too.
    • Hmm, there's one guy doing a feature-request. Weird. :-)
    • I really get the feeling the fbi guy is just saying what everybody wants to hear...
    • The mpeg just ends somewhere in the middle of a discussion. Very irritating. (It could be the end, but it doesn't look like it)
  • The only reason that the government was able to get this accomplished is because average people don't consider things that they read on a screen to be as important as what they can hold in their hand.
    For example: when someone accesses John Doe's email account, he doesn't get all worried and scared. But, if someone reads one of his snail mail letters, from his dear old aunt, you can bet that he'll be on the phone to the FBI, CIA and NSA demanding that they launch a twelve part investigation into the entire US Mail System.
    This may be a slight exaggeration, but you get my drift. I think that the public needs to wake up, and to realize that physical assets are not the most important things anymore; but that information is now the international currency. They need to realize that it is not control of gold or land or weapons that determines who has the power; but it is those that hold the information that control the power.
    After all, it may be a cliche, but it is finally true: Knowledge is power. (Incredible, frightning, unlimited power.)

    --Cheesethegreat
  • If what I said in my post scares you thats good. I hope you get scared enough to lift your head out of the sand and grab a glimpse of reality. No one questions the FBI's mission or right to spy on criminals and other social misfits, it's their job. You must remember that the FBI is only one of a whole phalanx of federal law enforcement agencies, many of which you have never even heard of. All these agencies share information and resourses. All of them including the FBI are political organizations first and foremost. I am not talking about field agents who work their butts off and risk their lives every day trying to protect the american people. I am talking about upper level management which is comprised entirely of political appointees who owe their livlyhoods and careers to whichever political party is currently in power. I believe that the current administration has gotten themselves in a spot of trouble for using the FBI to illegally gather information about employees of previous administrations. They got caught that time but how many other illegal searches were conducted without getting caught. If you examine the history of the FBI you will see that their record on protecting the civil rights of this countries citizens is not something to write home about. A system like carnivore allows them to gather more detailed information with little possibility of direct oversight. Once the info is downloaded to their computers it can be channeled to any other agency or individual with the click of a mouse. I am sure that you personally are not involved in criminal activity but you don't seem to understand that all kinds of information can be of value to other people and can be used for many different purposes, some of which could cause you an annoying problem, but some could negatively impact your lifestyle in a bad way. I have lectured you enough for one day so youmay now replace your head in the sandpit and sleep peacefully. BTW If my post scared you, you don't even want to know what my profession has been for my entire adult life. That would scare you to death.
  • If you reread my post you will notice that I did not say that government would become obsolete, only politicians and nothing is more dangerous than a career politician facing redundancy. I was also not referring to hard working career civil servents who go to work every day, do their jobs and go home to their families at night. This discussion isn't even germain to them except for the fact that they are too often unjustly punished when they try to bring the illegal activities of politicians to the public's attention. In fact this discusion doesn't even pertain to the people we elect to office. By and large most of them are reasonably good at their jobs. It's about a whole subculture of non elected individuals who form a layer between the person we elect and the career civil servent. They have their own agenda's which may or may not be the same as the citizens they are supposed to be serving. Government will never be obsolete for it is necessary in order for civilized societies to exist at all. With a more informed citizenry and high speed communications ability government can become more efficient and responsive. This is a very threatening prospect to many individuals in that middle layer subculture. They are the ones willing and able to do just about anything to preserve their positions of power.
  • 1. I made a copy of that response and I'm going to frame it and hang over my employees "suggestion box". 2. Since you seem to be intimately familier with the EZ form you are obviously not solvent enough for anyone to bother using the IRS as a weapon against you. 3. First off, it's doesn't not doesnt. 4. You are one hundred percent correct. So why do we want to give them a tool to allow them to do what they do more efficiently. 5. It's not the legal use that's the problem. It's the potential for illegal abuse that far outweighs potential benefits. Nuff Said
  • Don't let yourself get too excited by this guy. He would be the one screaming the loudest if he thought his rights were being abused. He needs to turn off his $5000 PC and take his $0.25 head out into the world and observe. I worked around guys like him my entire career. All talk, no substance. Surf in peace:}
  • Cybernetic Artificial Replicant Normally for Infiltration and Vigilant Observation which is Really Evil. So there.

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