“The American Civil Liberties Union, on Tuesday, urged Congress
to amend outdated electronic privacy laws following news of an FBI
system capable of large-scale email interception and analysis.”
“There’s no clear law that authorizes Carnivore,” said ACLU
associate director Barry Steinhardt. “But the FBI and the Justice
Department … will argue that there’s no clear law that prohibits
it. And Congress needs to put some real limits on what law
enforcement can do.”
“The ACLU urged Canady’s committee to prohibit Carnivore-type
systems — or “dragnets,” as Steinhardt called them — that give
law enforcement officials access to large quantities of
communications. “It is a system for intercepting huge volumes of
email and it’s a system that was never contemplated by Congress
when it passed the Electronic Communications Privacy Act” of 1986,
Steinhardt said.”