FBI Schematic of Carnivore
Hosted by Paul Weyrich and Lisa Dean of Free Congress Foundation
"If you look at this digital technology, it's a boon for law enforcement. There is so much more information out there ... for them to acquire," said Jim Dempsey, Senior Counsel for the Center for Democracy and Technology and a guest on Endangered Liberties.
Host Paul Weyrich said, "We had the incident involving the 'Love Bug,' which, I might say, shut down the Free Congress Foundation for a day. ... I noticed ... the FBI was able to track down that particular system to the Philippines and ... to the particular people who actually caused it and they were able to do it in a matter of days with the existing authority. And this was in a foreign country which has no particular laws governing this matter."
Dempsey responded, "And that simply proves how as you use the Internet you are leaving your digital fingerprints. And it shows how law enforcement is right there at the cutting edge using this technology. They can trace; they can identify people. ... Again and again they have managed to solve these crimes without any new authority."
Regarding the increased use of government-ordered wiretaps, host Lisa Dean asked, "Do they report on the success rate of the ... wiretaps?"
In response Dempsey said, "This again is very interesting. While the number of wiretaps is going up, while the number people intercepted per wiretap is going up - the number of conversations intercepted per wiretap has been steadily going up - and yet the number of incriminating conversations per wiretap and the number of convictions per wiretap has either been holding steady or been going downward, which indicates they are surveilling more and more for less and less payback."
Dempsey continued, "Obviously, crime is occurring online. All of us in our daily lives are legitimately using this new technology. It should no surprise to anybody that criminals are using it too. What is criminal offline is criminal online, and the government should investigate it. The point I'm trying to get across is ... how much authority the government already has. And it's ridiculous for them to be asking for yet more authority and for expansions in these laws when already there's so much information available to the government." Weyrich chimed in, "And they're not getting any additional results." Dempsey observed, "We see that crime is down. ... The government, I believe, is keeping pace. It is doing well with their current authority in investigating the online crimes."
Paul opined, "It seems to me a little ludicrous that we can have these annual celebratory press conferences by the Justice Department saying, 'Major crimes are down ... and, oh, by the way we need more authority because we're not able to keep up.'" Dean queried, "The Administration says crime is down and yet we still need more and more authority. Well, do they ever cite that because of the increased authority, that's why crime is down?"
Dempsey answered, "No, and they never say, 'Well, now that crime is down we'll yield some of our authority or some of our budget.' In fact, what you see is the Justice Department and the FBI are very adept around budget time at coming up with a ... new crime problem. ... Now it's this whole area of cybercrime, cyberterrorism, which they then say, 'Well, this is the new serious area. We need new authority. We need new resources. We need to create a new investigative center.' ... They never give up that budget authority. They keep all of that and yet seek the new powers, the new budgets, the new staffing for this new heightened, sensationalized crime area."