http://www.dailytelegraph.news.com.au/printpage/0,5942,2946467,00.html
The Daily Telegraph
Terror unleashes a hungry Carnivore
28sep01
OH, bring back those glory days of August, before it felt like One Nation
was running the Government, writes DINO SCATENA. You know, before we'd ever
heard of Tampa, back when New York still had its towers and we still had
all our airlines.
Obviously we're living in a new world now, a darker, unhappier place. Who
would have thought we'd be looking back on earlier this year as the good
old days?
Certainly, it's not the best of times to be a whining small "l" liberal.
Who wants to hear about things such as civil liberties, compassion and
personal freedom in a world apparently at war?
Even those who make a career out of such beliefs are having a hard time of it.
"Some of the comments we're hearing from world leaders are very worrying,"
offers Cameron Murphy, president of the NSW Council Of Civil Liberties.
"When you've got President Bush talking about hiring criminals and the CIA
assassinating people.
"It means civil liberties have gone out the door.
"If you go to an airport at the moment, or any government or public
building, you have to justify your existence to someone in a uniform every
10m."
It's in this environment, in the dark shadow cast by the modern terrorism,
that it would appear governments =96 the American Government, at least =96
are endeavouring to exploit public fear and implement surveillance systems
that will live on long after the fear has passed.
In recent weeks in America, "Carnivore" has become a new buzz-word.
Carnivore, or the DCS-1000 as it is otherwise known, is a mechanism
developed by the FBI to survey internet communications, allowing the
organisation to intercept and analyse huge amounts of e-mails and all sorts
of internet traffic.
When the existence of the system first came to light last year, it caused
an uproar in the US.
Now, suddenly in this new paranoid environment, it's being touted as a
firewall against terrorism.
"Which is utter nonsense," says Irene Graham, executive director of
Electronic Frontiers Australia.
"One of the biggest problems with Carnivore is when it's put on an ISP (an
Internet Service Provider) system, it collects vast amounts of information
on anyone who's using that system.
"And the American public is expected to believe the FBI only selects
information about suspected criminals that they're targeting. But there are
considerable concerns about the amount of information that the police can
collect about people who are not suspects."
Graham explains that here in Australia, law enforcement agencies have the
power to ask an ISP to hand over information on particular users through
the Telecommunications Interception Act (1979), but a warrant or similar
authorisation is required in each instance.
"To say something like Carnivore should be allowed to become common is the
same as saying the police should be allowed to automatically monitor every
single phone call, that they should be able to survey people just in case
that information should ever be of use to them."
Cameron Murphy believes that people's willingness to accept personal
intrusions such as the Carnivore system borders on exploitation of a world
in mourning.
"There are a couple of fundamental things," reasons Murphy. "It was a
terrible tragedy in the United States, but it was a crime, not an act of
war. And the appropriate way for it to be dealt with would be to bring the
perpetrators to justice.
"For all the rhetoric that we've heard about the importance of our
democracies in the Western world and that we have to maintain values, the
worrying thing is that Governments are undermining their own democracies to
fight this.
"And that's not the right approach."
2001 Mirror Australian Telegraph Publications
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