Date: 28 Sep 92 18:30:15 GMT
From: "J. Porter Clark" <jpc@avdms8.msfc.nasa.gov>
Newsgroups: comp.society.privacy
Subject: Big Brother has this message on file!
Organization: NASA/MSFC
X-Submissions-To: comp-privacy@pica.army.mil
X-Administrivia-To: comp-privacy-request@pica.army.mil
X-Computer-Privacy-Digest: Volume 1, Issue 084, Message 5 of 8

I just found out last week that the local network management
organization is archiving all network traffic onto 8 mm tape and has
been doing so for at least six months.  They plan on keeping this data
indefinitely.

They would hand over the tapes to Federal investigators if asked, of
course.  How could they do otherwise?

The reason they are doing this is supposedly to troubleshoot network
anomalies such as broadcast storms.  This is a particularly offensive
problem here for various reasons.  A typical use of this system would
be to play back a portion of tape into a Sniffer or similar device so
that network statistics could be compiled for some arbitrary period of
time.

The size of network involved here is several thousand machines, most of
which are PC's and Macs, but also including a substantial quantities of
workstations and mainframes.  I ran a rough check based on the numbers
they gave me, and it looked to me like they would run through a 5 GB
tape in about 30 minutes during a typical peak.

This alarms me, but it's hard to say why.  I'm not aware of anything
I'm doing with the network which is a violation of anything, except
occasionally common sense.  However, I don't compose every e-mail
message with the idea that I might be seeing it in the Washington Post
tomorrow.  Encryption isn't quite as handy as it might be, seeing as
how they're trapping every keystroke I enter unless I'm logged in right
at the machine.

I realize that tapping into the Internet is probably not safeguarded by
anything like the type of legal consequences afforded to telephone
wiretapping.  But this sort of systematic archiving of every byte on
the net for an indefinite period of time seems to me to be typical of
Big Brother at his worst, or the Soviet Union during the Bad Old Days.
Compounded with this is the fact that this is a Federal Government
installation, and it is required that employees avoid the appearance of
guilt as well as actual guilt.

IMHO, this is a profligate waste of magnetic tape.  Other than that,
what's wrong with the net police archiving net traffic like this?

I believe that they should:

(a) Recycle tapes after a couple of weeks.  Else they find themselves
    open to: "I got this e-mail message last January and accidentally
    deleted it; can you get it for me?"
  
(b) Keep the headers only and strip out the message contents.  If the
    header is unrecognizable, keep the whole message.  This should save
    some storage space as well as enhancing privacy.  I know that the
    comparison with the phone system is not really legal here, but the
    phone system records the sources and destinations of calls but not
    the calls themselves.  (Or do they?)

J. Porter ("Testing one, two, three...") Clark

-- 
J. Porter Clark    jpc@avdms8.msfc.nasa.gov or jpc@gaia.msfc.nasa.gov
NASA/MSFC Communications Systems Branch

ICON: A picture or symbol that stands for a word.  Icons are often used
in programs for young children who cannot yet read.
	-- some doctor's waiting-room magazine