From: Adrian Tymes (wingcat@pacbell.net)
Date: Mon Jul 17 2000 - 21:19:49 MDT
"[ Robert-Coyote ]" wrote:
>
> Disconnect the box?
>
> There will likely be (is?) a broadly statute proclaiming that any
> unauthorised alteration or tampering, disconnecting of the box is
> collusion, accessory to whatever "crime" they are investigating,
> cyber-terrorism, conspiracy to cyber-terrorism, and obstruction.
>
> Only qualified agents may alter or tamper with the box.. and there will be a
> long, expensive bureaucratic nightmare to accomplish this.
Disconnecting ain't altering or tampering. The box itself is still in
mint condition; it just isn't interfering. Or maybe the box gets a pair
of splitter feeds, so that rather than being between the router and the
rest of the ISP's boxes, it just gets a copy of the incoming and
outgoing signals. At which point, if it wants to block traffic, fine:
it wasn't conducting traffic anyway. It's still given full access to
sniff; it just can't do anything about the signals on its own.
Or, if they do try to shut down the 'Net, how many minutes do you think
it will take before Congress, acting on floods of outraged calls from
wired Americans, starts calling for the heads of whoever authorized the
deed? (And quite possibly also a presidential pardon for anyone and
everyone who thwarted the attempt, followed by a quick repeal of the law
in question.) Tarnished as they may be, there are still elements of
democracy in the USA.
And let's not even get into the finger that most (not all, probably, but
certainly most) non-USA governments would collectively give to any US
gov't official who "ordered" them to do such a thing. (There'd even be
a small - *very* small, granted - chance that certain non-US governments
might, if sufficiently tired of such requests, take this as an excuse to
"liberate the American people from their clueless and tyrranical
government".)
> Paul Hughes said:
>
> > Transhuman Mailing List
> > I just read this article by Robert X. Cringley:
>
> What an appropriate name.
>
> > Original Article: http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20000713.html
>
> > But I have my own theory about Carnivore. From a network
> > architecture standpoint, the best location for Carnivore is right after
> > the ISP's router. This puts Carnivore in the path of every packet
> > entering or leaving the ISP. It's also a major reason why ISPs might
> > not want to install Carnivore boxes -- it's the network's point of
> > greatest vulnerability. In this position, Carnivore can act as a
> > listening and recording device, OR IT CAN ACT AS A SWITCH. If
> > we ever hear a proposal from the FBI in which it plans to install
> > Carnivores at all 6000 ISPs in the U.S., we'll be giving the
> > government the power to do something it can't do right now.
>
> > Shut the Internet down.
>
> For the approximately ten minutes it will take ISP owners to figure
> out what happened, and disconnect the box.
>
> Sheesh.
>
> --
> John S. Novak, III jsn@concentric.net
> The Humblest Man on the Net
>
> ________________________________________________________________________
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