ITinfo: FBI Drags Its Heels on Carnivore Papers

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FBI Slowly Released Data

Slow document release schedule angers privacy advocates

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FBI Drags Its Heels on Carnivore Papers

by Dave Murphy
ISSN 1535-3613

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has been forced to release 3,000 pages of information related to its Carnivore email surveillance system. The request for information made by civil liberty and privacy groups under the federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requires the FBI to comply in an expedited manner; however, the actual schedule doesn't seem too "expedited" to me.

The FBI laid out its schedule for the release of the documents in a filing with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia late yesterday. The FBI says it has to review the 3,000 pages one at a time to determine what information must be released under the FOIA order. Not all documents are covered by the FOIA, some are exempt for national security, privacy, or other reasons.

The first batch of documents will be released within 45 days, and additional batches will be released on a 45-day schedule. Expedited? I don't think so.

This totally blows my mind. I spent my first career working for the government, and I saw hundreds of my coworkers take great pains to protect the privacy of U.S. citizens. Now along comes a group of FBI rogues collecting all email messages passing through an ISP's system under the presumption that they are only collecting messages intended for a specific target. Get out of here! I don't want you collecting my messages in your overly-broad net. Get a court order to monitor a specific POP mailbox -- but don't skim all the messages hoping to find something interesting. And now, the FBI wants to drag it's heels and release a stack of papers every 45 days? Yeah right.

How about it folks? Got on opinion on this?

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http://itrain.org/itinfo/2000/it000817.html
updated August 17, 2000