FBI 'Carnivore' Glitch Hurt Al Qaeda Probe
Tue May 28, 8:40 PM ET

By Andy Sullivan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Glitches in a controversial FBI (news - web
sites) 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 on 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 (news - web
sites), 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 Sept. 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.