http://www.washtech.com/news/regulation/12051-1.html By Robert O'Harrow Jr., Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, August 24, 2001; 6:43AM Federal law enforcement authorities may soon expand the use of a controversial FBI monitoring system to capture e-mail and other text messages sent through wireless telephone carriers, as well as messages from their Internet service providers, according to a telecommunications industry group. [...] Now the the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association is warning that authorities could use Carnivore as soon as October to examine messages such as those sent by cellular telephones and other handheld devices. That's because the industry has been unable to come up with a way to give law enforcement agencies the ability to monitor digital communications as they can the more easily captured analog messages, as required by a 1994 law. In an Aug. 15 letter to the Federal Communications Commission, Michael Altschul, the association's senior vice president and general counsel, said its members can't meet the Sept. 30 deadline for the technology. "If the industry is not provided the guidance and time to develop solutions for packet surveillance that intercept only the target's communications, it seems probable that Carnivore, which intercepts all communications in the pathway without the affirmative intervention of the carrier, will be widely implemented," Altschul wrote. [...] ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/ To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------
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