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Back in the days when Ma Bell was just Ma Bell, law-enforcement officers always knew how to listen in on phone conversations: Get a court order and tap the phone line.
It isn't so simple anymore. U.S. telecom carriers have installed 83 million miles of fiber-optic lines since the '80s to carry Web and wireless communications. They plan to bury more than double that amount between 2001 and 2006, estimates Patrick Fay, an analyst with KMI. This year, optical-gear makers introduced equipment capable of pumping 40 gigabits of data -- or 10,000 copies of War and Peace -- per second. That's four times the previous highest attainable capacity.
This rapid expansion of communications has played a key role in driving economic growth over the last 20 years. But the digital flood has also created a harsh new reality for law-enforcement agencies in the wake of four terrorist hijackings and the successful attacks on New York and Washington. Gone are the days when a tape recorder and a bug on a copper wire were enough to listen in. Now, criminals and terrorists use cheap and easy-to-buy software programs that scramble cell-phone conversations and e-mails from computers.
DATA MAZE. What's more, the very nature of the telecommunications infrastructure today inhibits information gathering. The same optical networks that carry data at the speed of light also cloak information far more effectively than copper wires. Data traveling over these systems can follow any number of convoluted routes, and packets of data can even split into multiple parts, travel over different networks, and rejoin later. Perhaps most difficult of all, the augmented volume of information has made it far harder to sift through the rising tide of intelligence data.
The speed of optical networks poses the biggest problem. Today, one method of intercepting the information going through high-speed networks is to use a so-called sniffer. The controversial FBI Carnivore system is one example. These systems generally constitute a piece of software residing on a specially programmed PC that can sift through Web pages, e-mails, and other content to search for evidence.
Usually, they're trained to look for e-mail or Web surfing by specific topics or subjects. The FBI can request to connect its Carnivore sniffer to an Internet service provider's data network, although many ISPs choose to use their own in-house version of Carnivore.
Sniffers, though, often can't sniff fast enough. FBI programs are capable of registering a mere 50 megabits of data per second, says Robert Graham, an expert on network sniffing technologies who wrote an open-source alternative to Carnivore. Operating systems' limitations are to blame, according to Graham. As a result, the FBI's equipment often collects only a portion of the transmitted data. Or, overwhelmed, the equipment can shut down altogether, Graham says.
Other forms of surveillance are far more costly and require more technical skill. One method is to tap into fiber-optic cable at amplifying stations. These are locations where the light that transports data over cable is pumped up so that it can embark on another leg of the journey, says Manfred Fink, an international communications-security expert based in Germany. The FBI and other agencies can install devices in these amplifiers that can grab the fiber-optic signal as it hurtles down the cable and convert that into readable information.
MESSAGE FRAGMENTS. In a similar vein, surveillance teams can plant sensitive snooping devices underground, adjacent to fiber-optic cables. As the light travels through cable, the fiber loses small portions of light -- and data -- especially where it makes slight turns, says Fink. The FBI's devices can pick up that light and read the transmitted information.
But turning those light waves into admissible evidence or valid intelligence is problematic, especially with split messages in different packets of data hurtling through different cables. The message is reconstructed by a data router only at the end of its journey near its assigned destination. Reconstructing these messages and plotting their journey through the Byzantine fiber networks is a tall order.
And even if intelligence agencies or law-enforcement officials can capture the messages intact, this doesn't guarantee that they can be easily read, says Kevin Murray of Murray Associates, an independent security agency. Advanced encryption systems that scramble the messages using powerful algorithms could make the text read like gibberish.
Criminals can simply download encryption software from the Internet -- many versions are free. For wireless and satellite transmission, they can buy encryption boxes that sender and receiver attach to their phones. Such devices can cost less than $100. The encryption algorithms, such as Triple DES and Blowfish, remain very difficult to crack. Even with the use of the best computers, cracking some encryption could take months, says Harold Krent, professor and associate dean at the Chicago-Kent College of Law.
DISTANT SECOND. The FBI and other intelligence agencies are sure to benefit from a sense of renewed mission, as well as the additional funding that's certain to head their way in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks. Further, devices such as Carnivore can be used successfully if used to monitor smaller streams of traffic.
And technology that would allow the FBI and CIA to process large amounts of information cheaply are now starting to emerge. For example, several companies are building advanced software links that can turn a thousand desktop PCs into a unified supercomputer, capable of sophisticated code cracking and information tracking.
Still, the crooks and the terrorists appear to have a big lead -- one that could take years to close.
By Olga Kharif in Portland, Ore. Edited by Alex Salkever
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Copyright 2001 , by The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All rights reserved.
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