[iwar] [fc:Anti-Terror.Tools.Include.High-Tech]

From: Fred Cohen (fc@all.net)
Date: 2001-10-28 19:50:12


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Subject: [iwar] [fc:Anti-Terror.Tools.Include.High-Tech]
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Sunday October 28 2:02 PM ET Anti-Terror Tools Include High-Tech

Anti-Terror Tools Include High-Tech

By TED BRIDIS, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - The government's pursuit of terrorists is relying heavily
on sophisticated technology, from software that automatically translates
foreign communications on the Internet to a device that secretly captures
every keystroke a suspect makes on his computer.

President Bush signed new anti-terrorism legislation Friday that enabled law
enforcement to rely on these tools more freely, and the Justice Department
immediately sent instructions to prosecutors.

``A new era in America's fight against terrorism ... is about to begin,''
Attorney General John Ashcroft pledged.

Over the weekend, top Justice lawyers in Washington e-mailed the most
cyber-savvy federal prosecutors around the country, describing in more than
30 printed pages how they can use the government's high-tech tools in new
ways. 

The e-mail, reviewed by The Associated Press, outlines new guidelines, for
example, for operating the FBI's Carnivore computers, which capture
suspects' e-mails in ways that require only perfunctory approval by a judge.

Another section says that in rare cases police can now secretly search a
person's house without telling the homeowner for up to three months.

During one of these so-called ``sneak and peek'' searches, authorities would
secretly implant a hidden ``key-logger'' device. The FBI acknowledged making
five such secret searches before it installed its snooping device in a
recent gambling investigation.

The key-logger, hidden inside a computer, secretly records everything a
suspect types on it. The device lets authorities capture passwords to
unscramble data files in otherwise-unbreakable codes.

Bush said this weekend that new anti-terrorism laws were needed because
modern terrorists ``operate by highly sophisticated methods and
technologies.'' The U.S. government has its own share of gee-whiz gadgetry -
enough for a season of ``Mission: Impossible.''

The CIA is rushing to teach its computers how to better translate Arabic
under a young program it calls ``Fluent.'' Custom-written software scours
foreign Web sites and displays information in English back to analysts. The
program already understands at least nine languages, including Russian,
French and Japanese.

Another CIA breakthrough is ``Oasis,'' technology that listens to worldwide
television and radio broadcasts and transcribes detailed reports for
analysts. 

Oasis currently misinterprets about one in every five words and has
difficulty recognizing colloquial Arabic, but the system is improving, said
Larry Fairchild, head of the CIA's year-old Office of Advanced Information
Technology. 

In a demonstration earlier this year at CIA headquarters, Fairchild showed
early plans for ``CIA Live!,'' which lets CIA experts send instant messages
and collaborate on reports and maps across the agency's ultra-secure
computer networks. 

The FBI and police in Boston and Miami, Fla., are using powerful software
called ``dTective'' from Ocean Systems Co. of Burtonsville, Md., to trace
financial transactions linked to last month's terrorist attacks against New
York and Washington.

The software, which runs on highly specialized, $25,000 equipment from Avid
Technology Inc., dramatically improves grainy video from surveillance
cameras at banks or automated teller machines. It can enhance images, for
example, that were nearly unusable because of bad lighting.

``Sometimes we're amazed at the quality of the image,'' said Dorothy Stout,
a top specialist at Veridian Corp. in Oakton, Va., who teaches police how to
use the video system. Other tools help her rebuild videotapes that have been
burned, cut into pieces or thrown into a lake. ``It's quite
time-consuming,'' she said.

At U.S. computer-crime labs, including a cutting-edge Defense Department
facility near Baltimore, technicians rebuild smashed disk drives from
computers. 

They also use sophisticated commercial software, called ``Encase,'' which
can recover deleted computer files and search for incriminating documents on
a seized computer. 

Experts are hard at work in the FBI's headquarters in Washington, using
Encase and other tools to examine computers seized after the Sept. 11
attacks. 

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