But Daniel Solove brings us a very practical piece of information about the FBI today. Their new toy used to be Carnivore, a computerized system to eat up our emails for stuff. But that was yesterday. Today it’s DCSNet (a/k/a Red Hook or Digital Storm, less ominous names but not nearly as cool).
DCSNet is a suite of software that collects, sifts and stores phone numbers, phone calls and text messages. The system directly connects FBI wiretapping outposts around the country to a far-reaching private communications network.Many of the details of the system and its full capabilities were redacted from the documents acquired by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, but they show that DCSNet includes at least three collection components, each running on Windows-based computers.
The $10 million DCS-3000 client, also known as Red Hook, handles pen-registers and trap-and-traces, a type of surveillance that collects signaling information — primarily the numbers dialed from a telephone — but no communications content. (Pen registers record outgoing calls; trap-and-traces record incoming calls.)
DCS-6000, known as Digital Storm, captures and collects the content of phone calls and text messages for full wiretap orders.
A third, classified system, called DCS-5000, is used for wiretaps targeting spies or terrorists.
Remember the good old days when the FBI had to set up wire rooms with agents actually monitoring wiretaps? It seems so archaic now, doesn’t it?
My favorite line is the last one quoted above, where DCS-5000 “is used for wiretaps targeting spies or terrorists.” Because computer software knows spies and terrorists from those who are merely subversive administration-hating Americans. Or mens-room toe-tapping senators, for that matter. But the FBI says so, and if you can’t trust the FBI, who can you trust? Right, Alberto?
Not being sufficiently versed at the outer limits of technology, I hesitate to offer an opinion on how intrusive law enforcement methodology has become in the private lives of every human being on this planet. But that’s never stopped me before. If Red Hook and Digital Storm (by the way, code names ending in Storm are so played) can’t cover every communication running through lines of any type today, it is only because there aren’t enough imaginative cops out there to make full use of them.
There are not enough courts, judges, lawyers, cops or jail cells to address the issues that arise with the Government having this much power. The notion of self-policing by the police has been proven false so many times over that anyone entertaining this as a meaningful limitations is just silly, loopy or blind.
The only potential good use of the Government’s new toy is that next time you wish you recorded a telephone conversation but forgot to hook up that little suction cup from Radio Shack, you can just call up the FBI and order a copy. And at a dollar a pop, we can make a serious dent in the national debt, provided the funds aren’t dedicated to the FBI pension fund.
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