-Caveat Lector-
>From Fox News:
FBI's Carnivore Just the First Step In Cyber Surveillance
Monday, October 16, 2000
By Patrick Riley
Amid all the hubbub over whether the current system violates
privacy rights, the agency has been quietly working on both
"Carnivore 2.0" and "Carnivore 3.0," according to FBI documents
released this month under a Freedom of Information Act claim
filed by the Electronic Privacy Information Center. The current
Carnivore is version 1.3.4, according to the documents.
An "Enhanced Carnivore" program has been under development since
last November — under a $650,000 contract scheduled to end
in January 2001. Most of the details on the souped-up snoopers
were blacked out in heavy black marker before the papers were
released.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation makes no bones about its
plans for the system, which sifts an Internet Service Provider’s
transmissions to track suspects' online activity.
"As it looks today, it could be completely different a year from
now," said FBI spokesman Paul Bresson. "Really, we've only seen
the tip of the iceberg in terms of the change in technology."
He said improving Carnivore is vital for keeping pace with
criminal elements.
"This is going to continue to be a cat-and-mouse game," he said.
"There's always going to be software and other encryption
technology that render a system less useful."
He declined to give specific details. But privacy experts say an
evolving Carnivore presents a problem for those trying to keep an
eye on it.
"It's a moving target," said David Banisar, a senior fellow at
EPIC. "It means there needs to be continual oversight, not just
onetime oversight. It means that if we get the source code we'll
have to get the source code as it changes also, and do a
re-analysis as the functions of the software change."
The program's source code, the piece of information most sought
after by activists trying to figure out if Carnivore reads the
e-mail of more than just those targeted by a court order, was
omitted from the 600-plus pages given to EPIC in the first of
several planned releases. But the organization has vowed to
continue fighting for it.
Despite the incomplete technical blueprint, the newly public
papers do shed some light on what sequels to Carnivore might look
like.
Three jargon-heavy lines of text that survived the FBI censor
reveal that Version 2.0 will be capable of "built-in data
analysis that Carnivore doesn’t appear to do now," Banisar said.
That means being able to display captured Internet data as soon
as Carnivore intercepts it. The current system merely stores the
data and two other programs — "Packeteer" and "Coolminer"
— must be used to process and display it.
No information was released from the Version 3.0 section but
research mentioned elsewhere in the unclassified papers involves
an aspect of the technology dubbed "Dragon Net" that captures
telephone conversations held via the Web — a process known
as "voice over IP" technology.
Banisar suspects the FBI might also want its future sniffers to
have the ability to track multiple targets simultaneously. That
wouldn't bode well, he said. "The more capability it has to
intercept more than one target, the more likely it is to be
abused."
While the current Carnivore is purely monogamous, it casts a
wider net than commonly thought, according to an analysis of the
FBI documents by anti-computer crime site SecurityFocus.com.
Carnivore can "be programmed to watch for all the Internet
activities of a particular person," said Kevin Poulson, editorial
director at SecurityFocus and a former hacker. The system can
even reconstruct Web pages viewed by a suspect. "All that’s been
talked about is its ability to monitor e-mail."
In light of this, said EPIC’s Banisar: "It makes you wonder what
else they could possibly want."
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