Accountability & the FBI

Heard of Carnivore or Echelon? They’re old news; DCSNet is the new digital ear trumpet in the J. Edgar Hoover building. There’s lots about it in this article from Wired, including technologies, costs, legislation, and implications. A mildly troubling excerpt (emphasis added):

In particular, the DCS-3000 machines lacked adequate logging, had insufficient password management, were missing antivirus software, allowed unlimited numbers of incorrect passwords without locking the machine, and used shared logins rather than individual accounts.

Eek. I hope—at the very least— they change passwords every 30 days.