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"Even for some people who have worried about the balance of privacy and national security, the events of Sept. 11 turned those fears inside out. "Everybody thinks there are phone systems that listen for the words `bomb' and `death' and `president,' " said Brad Jenkins, the president of 01.com, an Internet service provider in Sacramento. Now, "it's frightening to find out that doesn't happen.""
http://nytimes.com/2001/09/26/technology/ebusiness/26SCHW.html
Of course, the Internet, and the new abilities of intelligence officials to eavesdrop on e-mail and phone calls, was supposed to help prevent such crimes. As a result, longstanding assumptions about the role the Net can play in the fight against terrorism are being challenged, even as experts say that investigators are likely to be relying on Internet tools - and testing their limits - as never before.
For instance, experts said, what can be done online to track a group of criminals depends in part on what those criminals have done online. The organization led by Osama bin Laden, whom President Bush has called the prime suspect in the attacks, is known not to trust high technology for important messages, relying on face-to-face communication instead.
At the same time, a senior F.B.I. official has said that the bureau is examining hundreds of e-mail messages to and from the suspected hijackers and their associates. And criminals can be tracked better than before because so many mundane acts - using a credit card, sending an e-mail message, paying a toll - leave an electronic trail. "Any transaction other than one conducted solely in cash generates a record," said James X. Dempsey of the Center for Democracy and Technology in Washington.
Since the advent of the Internet, the C.I.A., the National Security Agency and the F.B.I. have seen it as both a threat and a tool. Most of the official statements have focused on the threat: the ability of criminals and terrorists to communicate globally and to operate with relative anonymity and under virtually unbreakable encryption.
Now, however, the focus is on tracking down the perpetrators of the attacks, which officials say could involve unrolling networks based in as many as 60 countries. Neither Mr. Noble nor Paul Bresson, a spokesman for the F.B.I., would comment on any specifics of the current manhunt. But from material published earlier and interviews in which experts spoke in general terms, a picture emerged of the Internet tools available, and their strengths and weaknesses.
Surveillance - One of the most important tools the F.B.I. has developed for investigating crimes in the online world is an inexpensive computer that can be plugged into an Internet service provider's network to monitor the communications of suspects. The system, called Carnivore, is a version of a common technology that system administrators use to maintain networks. Most of the larger Internet service providers can actually comply with subpoenas to produce e-mail and customer records using their own technology, and do not need Carnivore.
Carnivore was designed to help law enforcement officers determine who receives a suspect's e-mail and who sends e-mail to the suspect, but it can also be programmed to capture whole messages. The technology has been criticized partly because it samples the communications of the innocent, as well as the accused. But if Carnivore, which is formally called DCS-1000, encounters communications that have been encrypted, the F.B.I. is unable to read the messages.
Cooperation - Law enforcement officials have found that cooperative efforts and treaties for mutual legal assistance have helped them fight international crime. The most well-known system for listening in on conversations is a network of satellite dishes known as Echelon (news/quote). It was created by the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Privacy activists have criticized the network. Yet a recent report on Echelon by a committee of the European Union Parliament found it less effective than its detractors feared.
Mr. Noble sees a more basic limit on information sharing - the reluctance of law enforcement officials to jeopardize a source or an investigation. "You'll see a lot of information sharing about how to improve the future," he said, but the most important information will remain closely held.
Searching - Any information that can be digitally scanned can be electronically searched, Mr. Noble said. Digitized fingerprints, pictures of suspects and even scans of passport stamps can be searched by computers, using software designed to sift quickly through mountains of information, he said. While these tools may not produce exact matches, they can narrow the work of human investigators, he said, "by finding the 5,000 phone calls out of a million you want to look at."
The most limited resource in any investigation is the investigators' time, he said, and on that front the Internet's tools pose a burden as well. "The biggest problem is the number of communications that you receive and have to respond to," he said.
Those tools still need to be sharpened with other useful intelligence, said Mark Rasch, a former federal prosecutor who worked on investigations in domestic and international criminal cases. "None of that technology helps unless you know who to point it at, at least in a general way," he said.
Since the Sept. 11 attacks, sentiment has grown to relax Fourth Amendment protections to allow investigators to pursue the case against terrorists more effectively, and Congress has already begun the process of making it easier for law enforcement officials to use wiretaps. Citing the protection against unreasonable searches, Mr. Rasch said, "At times like this we redefine what we consider reasonable."
Even for some people who have worried about the balance of privacy and national security, the events of Sept. 11 turned those fears inside out. "Everybody thinks there are phone systems that listen for the words `bomb' and `death' and `president,' " said Brad Jenkins, the president of 01.com, an Internet service provider in Sacramento. Now, "it's frightening to find out that doesn't happen."
Mr. Noble did not want to express an opinion on the new proposals. But he said he wanted investigators to be able to do some of what the business world does every day. "Right now, the minute you buy something, your identity is being checked to see if you've exceeded your spending limit or departed from your buying pattern," he said. "In law enforcement, we don't have the tools or the architecture to do that."
The measures currently being considered would not tip the balance between privacy and security too far, said Stewart A. Baker, a lawyer in Washington and former general counsel to the National Security Agency. Other proposals could have a stronger impact. Mr. Baker said he was concerned that relaxing privacy protections could eventually lead to "dragnet searches" of e-mail for certain words and phrases.
"It would be a very big change in our approach to the privacy of communications," he said. "At that point, you become very worried about the consequences for the privacy of ordinary people."