IP: Carnivore Details Emerge

[Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

> Date: Wed, 4 Oct 2000 18:35:22 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Kevin Poulsen <klp () well com>
> To: Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>
> Subject: Carnivore Details Emerge
>
>
> Dave,
>
> Ip'ers may be interested in my story on the documents EPIC FOIA'd on
> Carnivore.
>
> A few of the documents have been scanned and are at:
> http://www.epic.org/privacy/carnivore/foia_documents.html
>
> -Kevin
>
> http://www.securityfocus.com/news/097
>
> Carnivore Details Emerge
>
> WASHINGTON--The FBI's Carnivore surveillance tool monitors more than just
> email.
>
> Newly declassified documents obtained by Electronic Privacy Information
> Center (EPIC) under the Freedom of Information Act reveal that Carnivore
> can monitor all of a target user's Internet traffic, and, in conjunction
> with other FBI tools, can reconstruct web pages exactly as a surveillance
> target saw them while surfing the web.
>
> The capability is one of the new details to emerge from some six-hundred
> pages of heavily redacted documents given to the Washington-based
> nonprofit group this week, and reviewed by SecurityFocus Wednesday.
>
> The documents confirm that Carnivore grew from an earlier FBI project
> called Omnivore, but reveal for the first time that Omnivore itself
> replaced a still older tool. The name of that project was carefully
> blacked out of the documents, and remains classified "secret."
>
> The older surveillance system had "deficiencies that rendered the design
> solution unacceptable." The project was eventually shut down.
>
> Development of Omnivore began in February 1997, and the first prototypes
> were delivered on October 31st of that year. The FBI's eagerness to use
> the system may have slowed its development: one report notes that it
> became "difficult to maintain the schedule," because the Bureau deployed
> the nascent surveillance tool for "several emergency situations" while it
> was still in beta release. "The field deployments used development team
> personnel to support the technical challenges surrounding the insertion of
> the OMNIVORE device," reads the report.
>
> <snip>