[Raven] 'DIGITAL STORM' BREWS AT FBI - Washington Post

["Caspar Bowden" <cb@fipr.org>]

'DIGITAL STORM' BREWS AT FBI

Issue: Privacy

The FBI is seeking $75 million in budget appropriations to update its
court-sanctioned telephone and cellular phone data collection systems. One
is called "Digital Storm" and allows agents to monitor telephone calls and
analyze computerized recordings. The FBI is also looking to create a system
that would provide the "foundation for an up-to-date flexible digital
collection infrastructure" for wiretaps and an "enterprise database" that
would enable agents to analyze and share a huge amount of data via a secure
World Wide Web network. FBI officials said the bureau's information
technology systems are aging and need to be updated to keep pace with
criminal activities that occur both on the Internet and offline. But civil
liberties activists, legislators and legal specialists claim that the
bureau's proposal could erode constitutional protections that limit
government searches. For example, the FBI estimates that the technological
advances would so improve the ability to conduct wiretaps that the number of
approved taps would increase by 300 percent over the next decade. Deputy
Assistant Director Edward Allen played down that number.
[SOURCE: Washington Post (A1), AUTHOR: Robert O'Harrow Jr.]
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A20426-2000Apr5.html)


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