Wednesday, May 29, 2002

Bin Laden Inquiry Was Hindered by F.B.I. E-Mail Tapping
The system, Carnivore, which was supposed to pick up e-mail from targets of counterterrorism investigations, "also picked up the e-mails of noncovered" individuals, according to an internal bureau e-mail message dated April 5, 2000, that was made public yesterday.

"The F.B.I. technical person was apparently so upset that he destroyed all the e-mail," apparently including mail related to the investigation, said the memorandum, addressed to M. E. Bowman, associate general counsel for national security affairs.

Bureau documents written the next week said Carnivore had a tendency to cause "improper capture of data" that "not only can violate a citizen's privacy, but also can seriously `contaminate' ongoing investigations" through unlawful interceptions.

Yesterday, a bureau official disputed the account in the memorandum. He said no information had been lost, because the e-mail had been recovered. The system gathered too much information, the official said, not because it was flawed or experimental, but because the Internet service provider gave agents outdated settings for the tapped computers.

"The technology assistance provided by the I.S.P. is vital to proper configuration," the official said.

Although the bureau would not comment directly about the target of the tap, the memorandum said the tap was conducted in Denver under counterterrorism laws for the "UBL Unit," presumably concerned with investigating Osama bin Laden, who is often referred to in government documents as Usama.

The documents were made public under a Freedom of Information Act request from the Electronic Privacy Information Center, an advocacy and policy group in Washington.

The bureau developed Carnivore to give it some of the power that it has historically had with telephones. The system can tap the communications stream of an Internet service provider to retrieve e-mail to and from the target of an investigation. The system can also retrieve just the e-mail addresses of senders and recipients of the target's e-mail, a method similar to technologies long used by investigators to capture phone numbers dialed by suspects and people who call them.

The system, announced to the public in 2000, has been criticized by civil liberties advocates. They have said that it might collect more information than law enforcement is entitled to collect and that it samples the communications of many people not under investigation to capture a suspect's communications.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/29/national/29EMAI.html?todaysheadlines

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