- WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- Glitches
in a controversial FBI system to monitor the e-mail of suspected criminals
likely hampered an investigation of al Qaeda two years ago, according to
internal FBI documents released Tuesday.
-
- According to memos obtained by the Electronic Privacy
Information Center, FBI investigators threw out the results of an e-mail
wiretap in March 2000 because the system, commonly known as "Carnivore,"
collected electronic messages of regular Internet users as well as the
target of the probe.
-
- While the target was blacked out in the memo, the FBI
unit in question was charged with monitoring Osama bin Laden, said David
Sobel, the EPIC lawyer who obtained the documents under the Freedom of
Information Act. Washington blames bin Laden and his al Qaeda network for
the Sept. 11 attacks that killed about 3,000 people.
"The FBI software not only picked up the e-mails under the electronic
surveillance of the FBI's target ... but also picked up e-mails on non-covered
targets.
The FBI technical person was apparently so upset that he destroyed all
the e-mail take," said an unidentified supervisor in an April 5, 2000,
memo to M.E. "Spike" Bowman, the FBI's associate general counsel
for national security issues.
The documents do not imply the FBI could have prevented the September 11
attacks, but they do highlight problems with the implementation of Carnivore,
Sobel said.
"This shows that the FBI has been misleading Congress and the public
about the extent to which Carnivore is capable of collecting only authorized
information," he said.
An FBI official declined to comment.
Developed to intercept the e-mail and other online activities of suspected
criminals, Carnivore has come under fire from lawmakers and civil liberties
groups who say it is too invasive.
FBI officials have told Congress the system captures only a narrow field
of information for which interception is authorized by a court order.
The documents showed Carnivore had occasionally grabbed the e-mail messages
of other Internet users, especially when set up to work on unusual e-mail
systems.
"Encountering nonstandard implementation has led to inadvertently
capturing and processing data outside the Order of Consent," says
one memo from an FBI field officer.
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