Government, Academics Fret Over Carnivore

W A S H I N G T O N, Sept. 11 -- While the Justice Department decides whichgroup will perform an independent review of the much-criticized“Carnivore” e-mail surveillance system, Attorney General JanetReno says she wants to change the name of the tool to something alittle less threatening.

The review, offered by the department as a way to calm privacyconcerns from the public and Congress, which has had severalhearings on the tool, will be performed by a group chosen by thegovernment, based on applications. The deadline for applicationsexpired Thursday.

Rubber Stamping vs. Review

But several prominent universities have denounced the review asa rubber stamping, not an independent verification.

Tom Perrine, manager of security technologies at the Universityof California at San Diego’s Supercomputer Center, said thegovernment reserves veto power over who is on the review team,controls when and where the review will be issued and has theability to direct the contractor to make changes in the report.

“To be honest, we were pretty surprised by the restrictions,”he said Friday.

Perrine and his center has been joined by the University ofMichigan, Purdue University and the Massachusetts Institute ofTechnology in shunning the review process.

Justice Department officials refused to specify whatorganizations submitted an application, citing federal law thatprohibits revealing that information before a decision is made.Spokeswoman Chris Watney would say only that there were multiplesubmissions.

Perrine also considered reviewing Carnivore under the “OpenCarnivore” project, a group of security professionals andacademics. He said his group was willing to review Carnivore forfree.

But after looking at all the restrictions, he and his colleaguesdecided against it. He said no one in the group — which includesrepresentatives from AT&T, the University of California atBerkeley, and Tsutomu Shimomura, who tracked down hacker KevinMitnick — showed any interest.