SCN: Magic Lantern

[Steve]

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(Nat Hentoff, Village Voice, exerpts)---Beware of "The Magic 
Lantern."  Under the "sneak and peek" provision of the USA Patriot 
Act, pushed through Congress by John Ashcroft, the FBI, with a 
warrant, can break into your home and office when you're not there 
and, on the first trip, look around. They can examine your hard 
drive, snatch files, and plant the Magic Lantern on your computer. 
It's also known as the "sniffer keystroke logger."   

Jim Dempsey, deputy director of the Washington-based Center for 
Democracy and Technology, tells me that you have to be 
remarkably computer-savvy to detect the presence of the Magic 
Lantern in some crevice in your computer.   

Once installed, the Magic Lantern creates a record of every time 
you press a key on the computer. It's all saved in plain text, and 
during the FBI's next secret visit to your home or office, that 
information is downloaded as the agents also pick up whatever 
other records and papers they find of interest.   

Dempsey, who has been my guide to increasingly invasive 
technology for years, points out that this new version of J. Edgar 
Hoover's "black bag jobs" is not subject to the "sunset" clause of 
the USA Patriot Act, which requires Congress to review in four 
years much of the rest of that law to see if Ashcroft went too far in 
dismantling the Constitution. These legal break-ins, including the 
use of the Magic Lantern, are not limited to investigations of 
terrorism but are now part of regular criminal investigations.   

By the way, in case you might be just musing at the computer - 
typing in thoughts or theories you don't intend to send - the Magic 
Lantern will capture those strokes, too.   

Under previous law, the FBI had to let you know right away when 
they've made these uninvited visits in your absence, and tell you 
what they've taken. The agents may have gone to the wrong 
address, which is not unheard of, or gotten a bad lead, or 
manifestly exceeded their authority. On being given swift notice of 
the FBI's burglaries, you could quickly challenge the search.   

But under the USA Patriot Act, the FBI can go to a judge and get 
permission for a "delayed notice" of up to 90 days. Moreover, 
during this open-ended Justice Department war on terrorism, the 
FBI can keep going to court for further "delayed notices," since part 
of these secret searches may ostensibly be concerned with 
terrorism.   

And, Jim Dempsey notes, if they don't find anything the first and 
second times, they can keep breaking into your home or office until 
they come across a smoking gun. Eventually, they'll have to tell 
you they've been there.   

Reuters also has reported that the Magic Lantern would allow "the 
agency [the FBI] to plant a Trojan horse keystroke logger on a 
target's PC by sending a computer virus over the Internet, rather 
than require physical access to the computer as is now the case."   

The Reuters December 12 story quotes the FBI as claiming the 
Magic Lantern "is a workbench project" that has not yet been 
deployed. But I have a copy of a May 8, 1999, application to a 
United States District Court in New Jersey from a U.S. Attorney in 
that state at the time, Faith Hochberg. It authorizes a "surreptitious 
entry" to search and seize "encryption key related pass phrases 
from [a] computer by installing a specialized computer program... 
which will allow the Government to read and interpret data that 
was previously seized pursuant to a search warrant."   

The application also asks permission for the FBI or its delegated 
entities to enter the location "surreptitiously, covertly, and by 
breaking and entering, if necessary" - and "as many times as may 
be necessary to install, maintain and remove the software, 
firmware or hardware."   

So a precursor of the Magic Lantern was in use back then - under 
Clinton's FBI - and it is Jim Dempsey's belief, and mine, that the 
state-of-the-art Magic Lantern is now in the field, among us. The 
FBI already told Reuters in December that it uses keystroke 
loggers. So beware of what you stroke.   


Copyright 2002 Village Voice Media Inc.  





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