IP: out of time order read this first RE: Senate votes to permit warrantless Net-wiretaps, Carnivore us e

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

> Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2001 19:59:39 -0400
> To: farber () cis upenn edu, ip-sub-1 () majordomo pobox com
> From: Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>
>
> Cc: SAlbertazzie () steptoe com, SBaker () steptoe com
>
> Dave,
> I'm glad to see Stu joining the civil libertarian crowd. He's right, of 
> course, that there are reasons to be uneasy about the new "Combating 
> Terrorism Act."
>
> Current law permits specific Justice Department officials to authorize 
> meatspace telephone pen register and trap and trace devices without a 
> court order in two circumstances. Here's an excerpt from the U.S. Code:
>
> http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/3125.html
> > an emergency situation exists that involves immediate danger of death or 
> > serious bodily injury to any person [or] conspiratorial activities 
> > characteristic of organized crime
>
> This bill does three things of note:
>
> 1. It adds "U.S. Attorney" to the list of officials who can authorize 
> warantless surveillance.
>
> 2. It expands the "emergency situation" rule beyond serious bodily 
> injury/organized crime. I described this in my article:
> http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,46852,00.html
> > Circumstances that don't require court orders include an "immediate 
> > threat to the national security interests of the United States, (an) 
> > immediate threat to public health or safety or an attack on the integrity 
> > or availability of a protected computer." That covers most computer 
> > hacking offenses.
>
> 3. It rewrites pen register/trap and trace law and moves it from the 
> telephone world to explicitly cover computer networks as well, which would 
> permit Carnivore's use under this section (when operated in 
> trap-and-trace/pen-register mode). Here are some excerpts from the bill:
>
> http://www.politechbot.com/docs/cta.091401.html
> > The order shall, upon service of the order, apply to any entity providing 
> > wire or electronic communication service in the United States... 
> > inserting ``, routing, addressing,'' after ``dialing''... by striking 
> > ``call processing'' and inserting ``the processing and transmitting of 
> > wire and electronic communications''...
>
> Now, whether all this is, as Stu blandly suggests, "a bit alarmist," is up 
> to IPers to decide. But I think Senator Patrick Leahy, the chairman of the 
> Senate Judiciary committee, put it well during the floor debate last 
> night. Here's a quote from the Congressional Record.
>
> http://www.fas.org/sgp/congress/2001/s091301.html
> > LEAHY: Maybe the Senate wants to just go ahead and adopt new abilities to 
> > wiretap our citizens. Maybe they want to adopt new abilities to go into 
> > people's computers. Maybe that will make us feel safer. Maybe. And maybe 
> > what the terrorists have done made us a little bit less safe. Maybe they 
> > have increased Big Brother in this country.
>
> -Declan



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