Considering that we live in the Age of Rampant Conspiracy Theories --- something the Internet has been especially skilled at propogating, beginning with the "alt." Usenet newsgroups and quickly proliferating to e-mails and Web sites --- it's no surprise that CARNIVORE has gotten a lot of attention. I was not surprised that my query to write about it here got the proverbial nod.

Is CARNIVORE a threat to the online privacy of individuals? That remains to be seen. The FBI, in recent days, has said it is no more malignant or all-encompassing that the telephone wiretaps against criminals it has used for decades now. (Just don't mention programs like COINTELPRO when contacting FBI or Justice Department sources. Please, don't bring up Waco.)

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At this link, you'll hear what the FBI had to say in its own defence of the system this week.

As you would expect, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is already involved. Under the US Freedom of Information Act they are asking to be informed, in detail, about the inner workings of this system.

US Attorney General Janet Reno, not a known technophile herself, has come out and said that she will personally review the parameters of the CARNIVORE system and report on them to the US Congress, following the recent press uproar about this system.

What bothers many people in the United States (and abroad) is the tie-in between the Echelon rumors, and invasive practices in other countries. There's not much of a leap from what China is doing to what the Russians are doing, with a similar system they call SMOR, to CARNIVORE.

Considering the on-going leaks to the press over the past year about corporate and governmental systems which are designed to specifically monitor click-streams and electronic communications, both digital and satellite, it would take a very trusting and impervious person indeed to say that there's no fire behind all this smoke. And I'm not a conspiracy theorist. Nonetheless, as one wag as pointed out, just because you're paranoid, that does not mean that there are not people out to get you.

It should not leave anyone very sanguine that the ACLU associate director, Barry Steinhardt, says the FBI response to the controversy is "...trust us."

As most Los Angelenos know, "Trust me" translates into "Bend over."

But let's look at the popular counter-argument: Only criminals have something to hide.

According to this thinking, you have nothing to fear from your government if you are not engaged in subversive or illegal activities.

There are problems with such a position:

1. Who is defining "subversive?" Is it subversive, for example, to suggest a libertarian or socialist approach to the institutions of government?
2. Are "civil disobedience," which almost always leads to arrest, and its advocacy, to be defined as "illegal activity."
3. Do governments, by their very nature, have an inherent right to monitor the communications between their citizens, thus assuming guilt prior to the commission of any overt act of criminality?
4. Should all citizens be considered "suspect" until proven otherwise?
5. Can the Western democracies maintained their sanctimonious "human rights" stances against regimes like those in the People's Republic of China (see link above) while practicing the same ham-handed tactics of surveillance and (possible, almost probable) retribution against dissidence themselves?

That is a technical impossibility.

For all the "openness" of the Internet, for every John Perry Barlow there are 500 government paid apparatchiks to look down on one lonely Citizen K.

I don't believe I am evidencing paranoia in saying this, just COMMON SENSE.

I have a job, a mortgage and a family to worry about. I'm not a bored teenager with time on my hands for phreaking or cracking or whatever you want to call it. And, most importantly, I don't get paid to mind other peoples' business. But those apparatchiks --- like the CARNIVORE sleuths --- actually do. They get bonuses for ferreting out our abberations and dark secrets.

And everyone has (at least) one secret they would prefer no one else knew.

Most of us who have been online for any serious amount of time have revealed intimacies to our confidantes in this domain that we have not (possibly) shared with long-time friends. And these are intimacies which could be job-threatening, wreck familiar relations, and are not meant for "public consumption."

That is why, In My Humble Opinion, online privacy has become the issue of this new and emerging decade. We have found and established a new public space which is also an unprecedented "private" space. As personal letters were once a major means of communications for literate people a half century ago, today e-mail has taken a primacy even over telephonic communication.