Carnivore - FBI To Release E-mail Documents

FBI To Release E-mail Documents

By MICHAEL J. SNIFFEN Associated Press Writer

August 16, 2000

WASHINGTON (AP) _ The FBI has 3,000 pages of documents about
its "Carnivore" e-mail surveillance system and expects to
begin releasing some to the public in about 45 days, the
Justice Department said Wednesday.

Additional releases should follow every 45 days until all
the pages have been evaluated for release, the government
said. But it gave no commitment to either process or release
any specific number of pages in each interval.

"The proposed schedule is far too open-ended," complained
David Sobel, general counsel of the private Electronic
Privacy Information Center, which sued under the Freedom of
Information Act to get all the FBI's documents describing
the system. "With no clear commitment to evaluate a
specific number of pages in each interval, this process
could stretch on for many months or even years."

Responding to the lawsuit, the Justice Department and the
FBI told U.S. District Judge James Robertson in a written
status report that the government has begun reviewing the
pages to see if any should be withheld as classified
information.

Next, a large number of the pages would have to be reviewed
by private companies that supplied them under contract to
see if they objected, the government added. The companies
can prevent release of their trade secrets.

Carnivore has caused an uproar among civil libertarians and
in Congress. Attorney General Janet Reno has promised that
it will be reviewed by an external team assembled by a major
university and by an internal team, which hopes to report to
her by Dec. 1.

The Carnivore system has software that scans and captures
"packets," the standard unit of Internet traffic, as they
travel through an internet service provider's network. The
FBI installs a Carnivore unit at a provider's network
station and configures it to capture only e-mail to or from
someone under investigation.

FBI officials say court orders limit which e-mails they can
see.

But privacy advocates say only the FBI knows what Carnivore
can do, and Internet providers are not allowed access to the
system. They ask why the FBI retains remote control of
Carnivore equipment and doesn't just give it to Internet
providers so they can comply with court orders.

Sobel said he would likely seek modifications in the
government's plan from the court.

"We will point out to the court that Dec. 1 is the date
their review is to be completed," Sobel said in an
interview. "If they can pull these documents together for
their expert panel, they can pull them together for the FOIA
process. Making this material public should have the same
priority as their review."

The government said it was expediting the request "without
respect to the FBI's current backlog of FOIA requests." It
also said that it has waived fees for the processing. The
law and regulations provide that fees be waived and
processing expedited when there is wide public interest in
the requested documents.

But the government warned that "review of these documents
will be more complex than most FBI Freedom of
Information-Privacy Act requests because, among other
things, a large amount of responsive material ...(was)
supplied, under contract, by outside commercial entities.
These outside commercial entities will, under existing laws
and regulations, need to be notified and given an
opportunity to weigh in on the disclosure of their
information."