FC: Carnivore goes wireless: FBI to snoop cell phones, handheld PCs

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

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.

   [...]




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