It then sends the filtered information from an e-mail or a visit to a web site into the carnivore system to be analyzed by FBI Investigators. But privacy groups and some lawmakers have raised objections that Carnivore infringes on the privacy of innocent people who are not under investigation. The subcommittee will be in order. Today, Congress took a closer look at cyber-snooping as a House panel held a hastily called hearing on Carnivore. Constitution subcommittee chairman Charles Canady provided an outline of what's at stake.
Law enforcement is concerned that the information needed to keep the public safe remains available.
Individual citizens are concerned that a sufficient degree of privacy and the integrity of personal information be maintained in an age of modern communications and information storage, where information that may have traditionally been kept in a file cabinet at home is now electronically stored by a third party in cyberspace. And to explore that question, we're joined by Larry Parkinson, general counsel for the FBI, and Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a research organization on privacy issues and the Internet. Larry Parkinson, the FBI gets word of an ongoing criminal enterprise. It decides to launch an investigation. Well, let's take the example of a terrorist incident, for instance.