Carol Braddock wrote: > > The only way this is even is remotely palateable is open source. > They aren't gonna do it, for they wanna snoop. There are enough > ways to snoop as it is. What is this fetish about open source? The box is evil, regardless of how open source it is? Do you think for one second that opening up the source code to this thing will do what you think it will? Do you think you'll get the real sources or just some sanitized version which after review will never change??? Hello??? There's a clue out there you're not getting: You don't get access to the carnivore boxes to audit them. The Feebs can install whatever they want on them whenever they want, regardless of any audits, previousl reviewed open source or not. The only reason anyone could possibly want open source is so as to build their own carnivore. I'm sorry, I don't buy the analysis part at all. If all you want to do is analyze it to make sure that your privacy won't be violated, you're out in the cold. Regardless of the source code which you might (aren't anyway) be allowed to see, they can change the filter rules in a second to violate YOUR personal privacy. In terms of building your own carnivore, break out OpenBSD and run tcpdump with the appropriate parameters and send the output to disk. Big whoop. This of course ISN'T the issue. The issue is that these boxes should not exist, and have no purpose. Again, let me repeat: all crimes the feds are looking for leave physical evidence. That means you get a warrant and search the perp's local hard drive. As a Feeb, you wouldn't need this except in the rarest of cases. Because of carnivores being useful only in the rarest of cases, it makes no sense to subject a huge amount of perfectly lawful traffic to the privacy violations it will cause. And shit, in this I would agree with them: were I building these boxes, I would never release source code for a simple reason: possible flaws. Hell, if you could find some nifty packets to throw across the net that would make it past the routers and switches but were malformed enough to cause the carnivore to barf all over itself, you'd win. There was a similar recent FreeBSD flaw for the older kernels. -- ----------------------Kaos-Keraunos-Kybernetos--------------------------- + ^ + :Surveillance cameras|Passwords are like underwear. You don't /|\ \|/ :aren't security. A |share them, you don't hang them on your/\|/\ <--*-->:camera won't stop a |monitor, or under your keyboard, you \/|\/ /|\ :masked killer, but |don't email them, or put them on a web \|/ + v + :will violate privacy|site, and you must change them very often. [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.sunder.net ------------
