Security News > 2000 > September > FC: Toothless Carnivore? from Brock Meeks (fwd)

FC: Toothless Carnivore? from Brock Meeks (fwd)
2000-09-14 19:59

---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2000 15:09:37 -0400 From: Declan McCullagh To: politech () politechbot com Cc: brock.meeks () msnbc com Subject: FC: Toothless Carnivore? from Brock Meeks ********** From: "Meeks, Brock" To: "'declan () well com'" Subject: Toothless Carnivore Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2000 12:02:21 -0700 Yesterday, during a House hearing on Mob involvement on Wall St., Thomas Fuentes, chief of the FBI's Organized Crime Division, coughed up the following hairball (which I reported yesterday) when asked if e-mail interception was helpful during FBI investigations. Fuentes had earlier groused about how technology and the Internet were making his job harder. As a bonus tidbit, Fuentes admitted that the cyrpto genie was out of the bottle. The following is transcribed verbatim from yesterday's hearing: Fuentes: The difficulty with e-mail is that you really don't hear the tone of voice. You can't tell if the person is screaming, it helps to hear the tone of the voice in trying to determine are they are saying this tongue-in-cheek or do they really mean it, are they really going to fly to Arizona and kill somebody and kill his wife and hold him hostage, is he kidding. Does the person at the other end show fear in that conversation so that we could say, they are using intimidation and threats of violence and they're serious. Because you can hear these kinds of conversations in the locker room at your health club and the people don't really mean it, they're getting ready for a tennis game or something. But in our case they mean it, more often than not, and that's the part that is conveyed through the telephone or through microphone interception that e-mail interception will never substitute for. Q: Do you accept the premise that encryption technology is readily available to be downloaded even overseas and to be used? Fuentes: [pause] Yes. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- the moderated mailing list of politics and technology You may redistribute this message freely if it remains intact. To subscribe, visit http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------- ISN is hosted by SecurityFocus.com --- To unsubscribe email LISTSERV () SecurityFocus com with a message body of "SIGNOFF ISN".


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