Posted on 09/10/2001 12:11:43 AM PDT by tbeatty
Friday September 7 8:24 PM ET Judge Demands Documents on FBI Computer Spy System
By Christine Gardner
NEWARK, N.J. (Reuters) - A federal judge on Friday ordered prosecutors to show him documents next week describing how a classified FBI (news - web sites) computer spying system works, saying their argument the system should be kept secret from defense attorneys was ``gobbledygook.''
The computer bugging question, which may have important implications for the public's right to computer privacy, has emerged as a key issue from the government's illegal gambling case against Nicodemo Scarfo, 36.
Scarfo, the son of jailed mobster Nicodemo ``Little Nicky'' Scarfo, is accused of running the loan-sharking and illegal gambling operations of the Gambino crime family.
During its 1999 investigation, the FBI obtained a search warrant to secretly install a ``key logger device'' on the computer the younger Scarfo used at his Belleville, New Jersey, business, Merchant Services of Essex County.
The device deciphered a password that let agents crack into an encryption program Scarfo was using and then monitor virtually every keystroke he made for the next two months.
Scarfo's defense attorneys hope to show that the key logger device was similar to a wiretap, allowing a sweeping, 60-day surreptitious search of his private communications. Authorities must obtain a warrant under special laws before installing a wiretap.
In the Scarfo case, the government went before a federal magistrate and obtained an ordinary search warrant based on probable cause, a lower standard than required by wiretap laws.
Scarfo's defense attorneys have asked to see how the key logger system operates, saying they are entitled to analyze it to support their motion to suppress the evidence it gathered.
The government is resisting the disclosure, claiming the system is classified and that revealing it would endanger national security. But when prosecutors presented an affidavit on Friday from a high-level Justice Department (news - web sites) official exhorting the system's classified status, U.S. District Court Judge Nicholas Politan said it was gibberish.
PROSECUTION'S ARGUMENTS ``GOBBLEDYGOOK''
``I don't know what it means. It's gobbledygook. More gobbledygook,'' Politan said, adding he was unconvinced that the system ought to be classified at all.
``It says the guides (that define classified material) are even secret. What do I do with that?'' he said.
The affidavit by Neil Gallagher, assistant director of the FBI's National Security Division, also failed to prove national security was threatened, Politan said.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Ronald Wigler told reporters that next Friday he would privately give Politan classified and unclassified summaries of the system's operation and more affidavits detailing the national security aspects at stake.
Wigler insisted the government went by the book when it obtained a search warrant to install the key logger device, but he acknowledged that current statutes did not specifically address what type of warrant was needed for such a device.
``The problem is the technology has advanced quicker than the law,'' he said, adding current statutes do not state which law applies when authorities use something like the key logger device.
The judge, in the first ruling of its kind, will decide whether the secret use of the key logger device is protected under the Classified Information Procedures Act, which the government has invoked.
A Washington-based public interest group that has been monitoring the case said the act, normally used in foreign espionage cases, should not be employed for domestic cases.
``I don't think they should use a national security technique for domestic cases,'' David Sobel, general counsel for the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said after the hearing. ``There ought to be a national security issue to the underlying case.''
It would be a high-tech remake of an old Low-tech phone number logger...
Back in the old days when phones all had rotary dials they used to capture the numbers that were dialed from a suspects phone by picking up the small sparks that were generated by the make/break of the switch in the rotary dial...you could pick this up from a fair distance on a sensitive radio receiver... they had a small device that worked like a tape recorder with a loop tape in it... after a set of spikes was received they would pull out the loop and replace it with another... later someone would slow down the loop on playback and simply count the static pops and thus discern the numbers that had been dialed..I doubt that this required any warrant...
The modern version of this could be a small thin wafer that goes into the connector of the keyboard... just look at the end of the cable from your keyboard and you will see 6 pins sticking out.... all that is required for a key logger is available at these 6 pins. There is a source of power, the data from the keyboard and a workable conductor to act as antenna. The wafer would be very thin and have adhesive on it's back side. It would be pushed into the connector and adher to the back and become virtually invisible... it would not continuously radiate RF ..but rather send it's data as a series of short rf data bursts that are not that far removed from the old rotary dial pulses from the old dial phones... these signals would not be detectable using simple bug-sniffers like the sort sold to the masses at so called 'spy outlets'. The signals generated by a set up like this could be picked up and recorded by a battery powered receiver/recorder left nearby the targets computer... a car parked outside a house would be a good place to put such a device. Once in a while someone could come by and get the data from the recorder. But there is no way that this sort of system could somehow magically only capture the data from a password entry...so they would be picking up all keystrokes... and it looks like that was a no-no in this case.
These 'wafers' should be very brittle so if messed with they would simply crumble apart leaving nothing functional behind...just what would look like crumbled black plastic bits.
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