FC: India worries about Carnivore's prowl, warrantless searches

From: Declan McCullagh (declanat_private)
Date: Mon Jul 08 2002 - 10:28:20 PDT

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    By way of background, an article from last December:
    
    http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow.asp?art_id=37906058
    "NEW DELHI: The Intelligence Bureau (IB) has prepared a list of new 
    keywords that are to be used to intercept mails emanating from IP addresses 
    in India. The move comes after investigations have revealed that Mohammad 
    alias 'Burger,' who led the Parliament attack, was in constant touch with 
    his counterparts in Pakistan as well as within India through email."
    
    ---
    
    http://www.ciol.com/content/news/trends/102070401.asp
    
    Privacy at stake: The Carnivore is on the prowl
    Guard the frontiers of your enterprise from the brainchild of the FBI, 
    Carnivore, an e-mail monitoring device now renamed DCS-1000. Carnivore is 
    actually a part of the DragonWare Suite, which allows FBI to reconstruct 
    e-mail messages, downloaded files and even WebPages. Read on to find out 
    more about the e-mail version of the telephone wiretap.
    Webscribes
    Thursday, July 04, 2002
    
    [...]
    
    The FBI has named none of the ISPs hit with a Carnivore warrant publicly, 
    because the agency keeps such information confidential. But one name is 
    known: EarthLink Inc., America's second-largest ISP with more than 4.7 
    million subscribers. CBI has come out with an agreement to use Carnivore to 
    track criminals in India. In the information Technology Bill that was by 
    India, there was a provision, which would have mandated that cyber cafes 
    keep detailed records of their users and their user's activities. The 
    deputy superintendent of police dropped that, but a provision has been made 
    that allows warrant less searches. It's only a matter of time that a system 
    like this will be installed on any of the mail server or ISP in India.
    
    Warning alarm for enterprises against the prowl of the carnivore
    
    Given the vast range of activities going on in an enterprise, it should be 
    apparent that it is not possible to do business without using monitored 
    channels. The prudent businessman assumes every fax, email, phone call, 
    etc. is monitored sometime between the moment it leaves the local 
    environment and before it arrives at its destination.
    
    Many users encrypt only critical communications, flagging those 
    communications as important to anyone looking. If you do not choose to 
    encrypt everything, what you do choose to encrypt is very important. 
    Encrypting everything with a very weak key is more effective than 
    encrypting a few things with a very strong key. If those few things 
    indicate potentially valuable data, it is easy to track their destination 
    and use various means to extract the content.
    
    [...]
    
    
    
    
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