Reno to Speed Review of E-Mail Surveillance Program

Atty. Gen. Janet Reno said Thursday she will accelerate a promised review of the FBI’s e-mail surveillance system and do everything she can to calm privacy advocates’ worries about it.

In a weekly media briefing, Reno reiterated that she will have an independent panel of experts critique the inner workings of “Carnivore,” the FBI’s system.

“The thought would be that we would show the source code to these experts and then create the opportunity for us to have a discussion about any weaknesses that they saw in the whole process,” she said.

Carnivore is the term used for the entire system, a computer running the Microsoft Windows NT operating system and software that scans and captures “packets,” the standard unit of Internet traffic, as they travel through an Internet service provider’s network. The FBI can install a Carnivore unit at a service provider’s network station and configure it to capture only e-mail going to or from a person under investigation.

At a Capitol Hill hearing last month, FBI officials said Carnivore has been used 25 times, including 16 occasions this year. None of the cases has gone to trial, so the FBI has disclosed no detailed information about them.

Privacy advocates say that only the FBI knows what Carnivore can do, and Internet providers are not allowed access to the system while it is installed.

On Wednesday, the Washington-based Electronic Privacy Information Center asked a judge to force release of Carnivore’s computer source code. U.S. District Judge James Robertson gave the FBI 10 days to respond to the group’s Freedom of Information Act request.