The FBI's newest e-mail surveillance tool is simply a logical extension of its existing wiretapping technology and does not pose any new privacy threat to rank-and-file Internet users, the FBI contended today in response to a critical news report about its recently developed "Carnivore" device. "A lot of what used to be telephone calls are now moving over to e-mail," FBI spokesperson Paul Bresson said today. Carnivore, which the FBI first put into use a little more than a year ago, simply extends the bureau's wiretapping capabilities to e-mail messages.
The FBI was responding to an article in today's Wall Street Journal, which quoted Mark Rasch, "a former federal computer-crimes prosecutor" as saying that allowing the FBI to use the Carnivore is "the electronic equivalent of listening to everybody's phone calls to see if it's the phone call you should be monitoring."
News: Privacy
