Electronic Frontier Foundation Increases Efforts to Protect Civil Liberties
Federal Government Pushes Carnivore After Terrorist Attacks
Consumer's Seem Willing to Sacrifice Rights and Liberties
September 13, 2001
Today the nation and the world are terrified by the threat of massive violence. The "impossible" today seems to be all too easy. The terrorist threat is at our doorstep and we fear we are powerless to stop it.
And Americans are reads to take any action to join in a battle that President George Bush has called the "first war of the 21st century."
Every American is quick to do their part in the fight against terrorism. But did you know that Internet service providers have reported that they are working with the FBI to monitor traffic? Until September 11, 2001 this was one thing they were unwilling to do.
Declan McCullagh reported in WIRED NEWS "Just hours after three airplanes smashed into the buildings in what some U.S. legislators have dubbed a second Pearl Harbor, FBI agents began to visit Web-based, e-mail firms and network providers, according to engineers at those companies who spoke on condition of anonymity."
John Perry Barlow, of Harvard Law School and co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), wrote a mass e-mail on Tuesday encouraging Americans to hold on to their freedoms by writing public officials, joining the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) or the EFF, "to prevent the control mania from destroying the dreams that far more have died for over the last 225 years than died this morning."
The WIZARD begs you to answer these simple questions. In light of September 11th's terrorist attacks are you now willing to allow the government to open and read every single piece of mail coming into your postal mail box? Will you let the FBI open your bills? Do you want them to monitor your purchases? Can the CIA read your letters from Aunt Martha? Will you now allow the NSA to catalog which magazines you subscribe to?
If the answer is NO!!!, then why would you ever allow the government to implement the "Carnivore" Internet monitoring program?
The FBI's controversial Carnivore spy system, which has now been renamed DCS1000 in an effort to improve 'public relations," is a specially configured computer designed to spy on an Internet provider's network and monitor electronic communications. Every piece of traffic on the host network is stuffed into the spy machine until a federal agent stops by to pick up a removable hard drive. What happens to the information then is anybody's guess.
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