IP: Hentoff: The FBI's Magic Lantern

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

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Subject: Hentoff: The FBI's Magic Lantern

The Jim Dempsey referred to in Hentoff's piece was a House staffer in the
early '90s and once, without saying anything, pointed me to a public
document (transcript of testimony before a House Committee), missed by
other jounalists, which containes an admission by the Secret Service that
it was monitoring bulletin boards and IRC channels.

> From the Village Voice --
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0222/hentoff.php

The FBI's Magic Lantern
Ashcroft Can Be in Your Computer
by Nat Hentoff

Before being confirmed for the Supreme Court, Louis Brandeis was known as
the People's Lawyer because he was pro-labor and fought monopolies and
trusts. It took months before the Senate agreed to put this "Radical" on
the court as the first Jew in its history. Brandeis was particularly
passionate about the right to privacy, and one of his dissents on that
issue foresaw the Bush-Ashcroft administration's ominous assaults on that
right.
In 1928, the first wiretapping case, Olmstead v. U.S., came before the
Court. A majority of Brandeis's brethren ruled that wiretapping a phone
without a warrant did not violate the Fourth and Fifth Amendments because
the taps were planted outside the home.

Brandeis, who was widely read and suspicious of government's overreaching
tentacles, wrote prophetically that "in the application of a constitution,
our contemplation cannot be only of what has been, but of what may be. The
progress of science in furnishing the government with means of espionage
is not likely to stop with wiretapping. Ways may some day be developed by
which the government, without removing papers from secret drawers, can
reproduce them in court, and by which it will be enabled to expose to a
jury the most intimate occurrences of the home. . . . Can it be that the
Constitution affords no protection against such invasions of individual
security?"

Brandeis could not anticipate the advent of the computer and the Internet,
but his prophecy has come true. Already, as Reuters reported last December
12, the FBI has asked "Internet service providers to install technology in
their networks that allows officials to secretly read e-mails of criminal
investigation targets." That molestation of privacy was called
"Carnivore." But the FBI has developed an even more insidious device to
obtain "the most intimate occurrences of the home"and office.

Beware of "The Magic Lantern." Under the "sneak and peek" provision of the
USA Patriot Act, pushed through Congress by John Ashcroft, the FBI, with a
warrant, can break into your home and office when you're not there and, on
the first trip, look around. They can examine your hard drive, snatch
files, and plant the Magic Lantern on your computer. It's also known as
the "sniffer keystroke logger."

Jim Dempsey, deputy director of the Washington-based Center for Democracy
and Technology, tells me that you have to be remarkably computer-savvy to
detect the presence of the Magic Lantern in some crevice in your computer.

Once installed, the Magic Lantern creates a record of every time you press
a key on the computer. It's all saved in plain text, and during the FBI's
next secret visit to your home or office, that information is downloaded
as the agents also pick up whatever other records and papers they find of
interest.

Dempsey, who has been my guide to increasingly invasive technology for
years, points out that this new version of J. Edgar Hoover's "black bag
jobs" is not subject to the "sunset" clause of the USA Patriot Act, which
requires Congress to review in four years much of the rest of that law to
see if Ashcroft went too far in dismantling the Constitution. These legal
break-ins, including the use of the Magic Lantern, are not limited to
investigations of terrorism but are now part of regular criminal
investigations.

By the way, in case you might be just musing at the computertyping in
thoughts or theories you don't intend to sendthe Magic Lantern will
capture those strokes, too.

Under previous law, the FBI had to let you know right away when they've
made these uninvited visits in your absence, and tell you what they've
taken. The agents may have gone to the wrong address, which is not unheard
of, or gotten a bad lead, or manifestly exceeded their authority. On being
given swift notice of the FBI's burglaries, you could quickly challenge
the search.

But under the USA Patriot Act, the FBI can go to a judge and get
permission for a "delayed notice" of up to 90 days. Moreover, during this
open-ended Justice Department war on terrorism, the FBI can keep going to
court for further "delayed notices," since part of these secret searches
may ostensibly be concerned with terrorism.

And, Jim Dempsey notes, if they don't find anything the first and second
times, they can keep breaking into your home or office until they come
across a smoking gun. Eventually, they'll have to tell you they've been
there.

But Justice Brandeis predicted that the government one day would be able
to remove private materials without physically having to go into your home
or office. Well, never underestimate the capacity of advancing technology
to further diminish what little is left of your privacy.

Reuters also has reported that the Magic Lantern would allow "the agency
[the FBI] to plant a Trojan horse keystroke logger on a target's PC by
sending a computer virus over the Internet, rather than require physical
access to the computer as is now the case."

The Reuters December 12 story quotes the FBI as claiming the Magic Lantern
"is a workbench project" that has not yet been deployed. But I have a copy
of a May 8, 1999, application to a United States District Court in New
Jersey from a U.S. Attorney in that state at the time, Faith Hochberg. It
authorizes a "surreptitious entry" to search and seize "encryption key
related pass phrases from [a] computer by installing a specialized
computer program . . . which will allow the Government to read and
interpret data that was previously seized pursuant to a search warrant."

The application also asks permission for the FBI or its delegated entities
to enter the location "surreptitiously, covertly, and by breaking and
entering, if necessary"and "as many times as may be necessary to install,
maintain and remove the software, firmware or hardware."

So a precursor of the Magic Lantern was in use back then under Clinton's
FBI and it is Jim Dempsey's belief, and mine, that the state-of-the-art
Magic Lantern is now in the field, among us. The FBI already told Reuters
in December that it uses keystroke loggers. So beware of what you stroke.



   "When you come to the fork in the road, take it" - L.P. Berra
   "Always make new mistakes" -- Esther Dyson
   "Be precise in the use of words and expect precision from others" -
    Pierre Abelard
                          John F. McMullen
   johnmac () acm org ICQ: 4368412 Fax: (603) 288-8440 johnmac () cyberspace org
                  http://www.westnet.com/~observer


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