“CARNIVORE” CHEWED UP

Before Total Information Awareness, before MATRIX, before Secure Flight, and before CAPPS II, the gov­ern­ment data-​​diving project that gave civil lib­er­tar­i­ans fits was the FBI’s Carnivore. Used in tan­dem with other Bureau tools, Carnivore could mon­i­tor a target’s Internet traf­fic, piec­ing together e-​​mail mes­sages and web-​​surfing his­tory.
But Carnivore has been aban­doned, accord­ing to Security Focus’ Kevin Poulsen. And it’s not because the Feds have decided that it’s no longer cool to peek into a person’s inbox. Rather, Carnivore has been out­paced, it appears. The Bureau is now using “commercially-​​available prod­ucts to con­duct Internet sur­veil­lance” instead.
THERE’S MORE: “If you’re among the mil­lions of Americans who took air­line flights in the months before the Sept. 11, 2001 ter­ror­ist attacks, the FBI prob­a­bly knows about it — and pos­si­bly where you stayed, whom you trav­eled with, what credit card you used and even whether you ordered a kosher meal.”

January 17th, 2005 | Data Diving | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.