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01/19/2005 Archived Entry: "FBI cuts Carnivore Internet probe"

Posted by steve @ 02:58 AM EST [Link]

REMEMBER WHEN CARNIVORE TERRIFIED EVERYONE?: If you're old enough to remember the mid- to late-1990s, stretch your memory back that far and ponder what comes to mind when you combine the words "FBI" and "Carnivore". Oooooooo! Scary!

Well, it was. Back in the late 1990s we were confronted with a new FBI technology which essentially monitored internet traffic via a machine hooked into an ISP's system. Although the FBI said it wasn't going to do anything hinky with the data collected, plenty of Americans were worried that it was going to be deployed willy nilly, particularly with the freedom hating Clinton administration in power which never missed an opportunity to incinerate a farm full of people or give new powers to law enforcement.

So what happened with Carnivore? Well, not much apparently.

The FBI has effectively abandoned its custom-built Internet surveillance technology, once known as Carnivore, designed to read e-mails and other online communications among suspected criminals, terrorists and spies, according to bureau oversight reports submitted to Congress.

Instead, the FBI said it has switched to unspecified commercial software to eavesdrop on computer traffic during such investigations and has increasingly asked Internet providers to conduct wiretaps on targeted customers on the government's behalf, reimbursing companies for their costs.

The FBI performed only eight Internet wiretaps in fiscal 2003 and five in fiscal 2002; none used the software initially called Carnivore and later renamed the DCS-1000, according to FBI documents submitted to Senate and House oversight committees. The FBI, which once said Carnivore was "far better" than commercial products, said previously it had used the technology about 25 times between 1998 and 2000.

I'm not sure whether this is a positive or negative development.

Read on.