[iwar] [fc:Government,.Internet.industry.in.anti-terror.eavesdropping.partnership]

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Date: 2002-05-27 07:35:06


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Date: Mon, 27 May 2002 07:35:06 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [iwar] [fc:Government,.Internet.industry.in.anti-terror.eavesdropping.partnership]
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Government, Internet industry in anti-terror eavesdropping partnership

MATTHEW FORDAHL, AP Technology Writer   Sunday, May 26, 2002

(05-26) 10:42 PDT SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) --

In the seven months since the passage of a sweeping law to combat terrorism,
Internet and telecommunications companies have seen a surge in law
enforcement requests to snoop on subscribers.

Privacy advocates fear that expanded police power under the Patriot Act --
combined with lax oversight and increased cooperation between the government
and private sector phone network and Internet gatekeepers -- may be stomping
on civil liberties.

The new laws do not apply just to terrorism but to other crimes as well.

"The trend up to Sept. 11 was for more privacy protection, greater
procedural safeguards, more sunshine on the process and more notice," said
Al Gidari, a Seattle privacy lawyer who represents Internet and telecoms
companies.

"I now see all those things tied up in a box with a little bow on them and
forgotten about in the corner," he said.

Law enforcers say they need stepped-up electronic surveillance to keep up
with sophisticated criminals, stressing that such efforts are targeted --
they're not trolling every server for e-mails mentioning Osama bin Laden.

Most of the time, they need to identify the source or recipient of a
threatening or suspicious message.

Privacy advocates agree that terror must be stopped, but worry that a wider
net is being cast that will capture information from innocent citizens.

"The fear is that we create a system where tremendous amounts of information
about people are collected and ultimately used for purposes other than what
was originally intended," said Alan Davidson, associate director of the
Center for Democracy and Technology.

Prosecutors stress that any search must be approved by a judge, and that
many of the changes have only streamlined procedures that were giving
criminals an upper hand in cyberspace.

"Probable cause is probable cause," said Ross Nadel, an assistant U.S.
attorney in the Northern District of California. "There is nothing in the
Patriot Act that in any way alters the standard that has to be met."

But critics say eavesdropping requests are routinely approved, and the only
public reports that detail the process don't say whether requests are
overreaching.

Demands for information have soared as much as five times over pre-Sept. 11
levels, says Gidari, whose clients include America Online, AT&amp;T Wireless and
Cingular.

At Quantum Computer Services, a free e-mail provider in Louisiana, search
requests from law enforcers ranging from the Secret Service to New York City
investigators doubled after the terror attacks, said manager Sheila Keller.

"We did have some accounts that were created in Saudi Arabia and the Middle
East that were registered in names that were under suspicion," she said,
adding that the requests have eased.

At one major Internet backbone provider, requests for information "have gone
through the roof," said a security executive who spoke on condition neither
he nor his company be named.

Most requests seek to identify operators of a specific Internet address for
which authorities wish to gather electronic evidence, he said.

AOL spokesman Nicholas Graham said there was a spike after the terror
attacks but that the company has since seen "a return to normal levels of
cooperative work and compliance with requests from law enforcement."

The spirit of cooperation between Internet companies and law enforcement was
growing stronger even before Sept. 11 -- a substantial change from the
industry's early days, Gidari said.

"They are no longer the last bastion of protection for consumers against
government incursions into their private information," he said. "The general
feeling is much more sympathetic and wanting to be helpful."

An FBI computer crime investigator told The Associated Press that some
Internet service providers in the San Francisco area keep logs for longer
periods just in case agents ask.

Agents will often deliver a letter saying they intend to ask a judge for a
warrant, and the ISPs will start gathering the information even before the
warrant is approved, said the investigator, who spoke on condition he not be
further identified.

Sue Ashdown, president of the American Internet Service Providers
Association, said companies should not jump the gun.

"They ought to be insisting on a court order," she said. "There is a serious
liability issue for them if they turn over information without sufficient
cause."

Companies such as Quantum, AOL and Earthlink say they have no choice but to
cooperate as long as authorities provide the proper documents.

The Patriot Act's surveillance provisions nevertheless allow carriers and
providers to voluntarily hand over information in "emergencies."

"Everything is now an emergency," said Gidari.

Surveillance tools range from subpoenas for basic subscriber information and
caller ID-type tools to searches of e-mail content and real-time
wiretapping.

Under the Patriot Act, agents can subpoena customer payment records to
obtain the identity of a user behind an e-mail address. They can also see
where people venture in cyberspace. These clickstreams can reveal what
people are reading, downloading and even purchasing.

The Patriot Act also allows law enforcers to bypass Internet providers to
capture e-mail addresses -- or even to read e-mail and wiretap conversations
in real time. Any federal judge, regardless of jurisdiction, can now approve
such warrants.

Nadel, who heads the hacking and intellectual property unit in the U.S.
Attorney's Office in San Jose, where large Internet companies such as Yahoo!
and Microsoft Hotmail are located, says the point was to make investigations
more efficient.

But the change has also made tracking surveillance even more difficult.

Bryan Sierra, a Justice Department spokesman in Washington, D.C., said
national tracking information on subpoenas or warrants was not immediately
available either internally or for public release.

When it comes to foreign intelligence, judges meeting secretly at the
Justice Department approved all 934 requests in 2001 to do surveillance
within U.S. borders, down from 1,003 in 2000. However, because of
streamlining, agents can now get a single order to track a suspect using
multiple communications companies across the country.

The Patriot Act also broadened the 1978 law that applies to foreign
intelligence eavesdropping to allow the FBI to request special warrants in
investigations not exclusively focused on foreign intelligence cases.

"Everyone in the business understands that the point of this terminological
change is to lower the bar," said Lee Tien, a staff attorney at the
Electronic Frontier Foundation, which advocates for online privacy and
security.

But anyone involved in this surveillance is forbidden to talk because of the
sensitive nature of the investigations.

"We cannot have a dialogue about this stuff. There's no way," Tien said.
"The only people who know about it aren't allowed to talk about it. It's
this wonderful union of Orwell and Kafka."

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