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Why Did The FBI Retire Carnivore? 321

Posted by timothy from the because-the-bugs-are-working-now dept.
We posted earlier this week that the FBI has officially dropped Carnivore, its "privacy respecting" eavesdropping program. Now reader Throtex writes "Professor Orin Kerr at the George Washington University Law School, a member of the Volokh Conspiracy discusses why Carnivore came to be in the first place and why it really was terminated (about two years ago). Essentially, the media (as usual) got a bit carried away with a non-story: Carnivore was designed to protect your rights from being invaded while sniffing only suspect data. Carnivore was dropped because, as of two years ago, the available tools met the necessary privacy standards, as Prof. Kerr noted in his article about the PATRIOT Act published at the time."
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Why Did The FBI Retire Carnivore? More

Why Did The FBI Retire Carnivore?

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  • ECHELON (Score:5, Insightful)

    by the_mad_poster ( 640772 ) <shattoc@adelphia.com> on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @11:02AM (#11408688) Homepage Journal
    I would be more concerned about things like ECHELON anyway.

    Speaking of ECHELON, maybe the reason people get so carried away with conspiracy theories is that our government is so bloody set against telling its own people what it does. AFAIK, even though a couple of European countries on the ECHELON project have admitted their membership, the U.S. government continues to deny such a thing even exists.

    If this were a truly free country, we wouldn't have a government that's so hellbent on keeping things a secret. You can talk about the practical reasons behind keeping things secret to protect our interests and the people involved in the operations, but that doesn't change the fact that it makes the country non-free in the actual sense, and it gives people a very good reason to be jittery about snooping projects.

    When the government is known to clam up and hide things, how can you ever be sure it's telling you the truth about its projects and that they really do what they're saying they do?

    • Re:ECHELON (Score:2, Insightful)

      by chris09876 ( 643289 )
      The problem is, if the government told people everything they did, everyone would revolt :) It's easy for governments to spend money, since it's other peoples money they're spending. Funding goes to all sorts of things that it shouldn't. It's too bad that countries are managed the way they are. You're right though, it is hilarious how governments continuously deny things that clearly exist. (Area 51?) It just makes people make up crazy stories try and have some idea of what they're hiding.

    • Re:ECHELON (Score:5, Insightful)

      by DaHat ( 247651 ) on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @11:06AM (#11408734)
      In some cases... albeit limited ones. Secrets must be kept in order to remain safe. Should Osama and crew learn all of the ways that we spy on them, they are liable to change their tactics and make it that much harder for us to try to foil them.

      Same goes for the Russians of years past. Had they known everything we were doing and knew about them, their view and response to us over time would be radically different.

      In short, for ANY government to function, it must have secrets and be able to keep them.

      • Re:ECHELON (Score:5, Insightful)

        by mirko ( 198274 ) on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @11:21AM (#11408889) Journal
        Should Osama and crew learn all of the ways that we spy on them, they are liable to change their tactics and make it that much harder for us to try to foil them.
        Maybe they rebel because they don't like feeling they're being treaten like foes ?

        BTW, I try to contribute to your masters' information indigestion : for example, when they said they'd monitor who'd take the kosher menu on the planes, I began taking it. Later, my boss told they'd monitor the proxy activity, I just began leaving my webmail window open with a 1 minute refresh so that he'd get 20x60 hits every hour (there are 19 images on my webmail window) even when I was in meeting.

        Funny how he ended admiting this metric was just useless...

        Now, believe me : if people believe in metrics and figure to assert how criminally you act, just give them enough for their money.

        This police-state crap is just areason to off sucha system (insert Benjamin Franklin Gates quote here).

        • Re:ECHELON (Score:2, Insightful)

          by AviLazar ( 741826 )
          Great, so you like tying up the governments resources (read: waste our money) by giving them false leads.

          So while a government agent is checking you out, because you like to try and be suspicious, they cannot check out potential real criminals.

          The gov't needs its secrets to help protect its people - because guess what - the bad guy has secrets and they are out there. If you think the system is so corrupt and that no politicians can be trusted - maybe you should become one and start setting things strai
          • whats with this overrated mod? To be overrated, doesn't the post have to have other people rate it first? How can you overrate something that has not been rated?

        • Re:ECHELON (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Elwood P Dowd ( 16933 ) <judgmentalist@gmail.com> on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @12:36PM (#11409747) Journal
          Should Osama and crew learn all of the ways that we spy on them, they are liable to change their tactics and make it that much harder for us to try to foil them.
          Maybe they rebel because they don't like feeling they're being treaten like foes ?
          Ok, that's some horseshit. There are many, many good and bad reasons that some people are terrorists. None of them are that after they become terrorists, we are secretive about the way we spy on them. What the fuck were you talking about? Is this just a nonsequitor?
        • How did this drivel end up modded insightful? It had practically nothing to do with the parent post.

          Besides, people have been putting "bomb bomb bomb bomb" in their e-mail sigs and USENET posts for practically forever now. If you think the gubment hasn't figured out ways to separate the investigative wheat from the anarchist chaff, you're fooling yourself.

      • Most secrets are to do with Big Brother style control freakery and covering up mistakes to prevent embarrassment, which is why whenever you get documents released in the UK or US after 30 years they're always to do with spying on John Lennon, or attempting to kill Castro or whatever.

        > Same goes for the Russians of years past. Had they known everything we were
        > doing and knew about them, their view and response to us over time would be
        > radically different.

        But they did know what you were doing - t

      • Re:ECHELON (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @11:44AM (#11409158)
        Um, Osama got away with his attack in spite of any spying we were doing on him because when the president was notified of the threat he did nothing. Bush ignoring the August 6, 2001 Daily Briefing [findlaw.com] (more than a month before the attack) is one of the most ghastly mistakes in American history.

        Anyways, postulating that threats make secrets necessary is just fearmongering. It also doesn't explain why Dick Cheney still refuses to release the energy task force records. Nor does it account for the long list of information Bush is withholding [americanprogress.org] from the American electorate.

        • Re:ECHELON (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Ironsides ( 739422 )
          So tell me what he could have done that clinton couldn't have done. I also see nothing on there that says there was a terror attack iminent or that they planned on doing a suicide crashing of a plane into the world trade center.

          As for refusing to release records, EVERY administration has refused to release records.

          • Re:ECHELON (Score:4, Insightful)

            by Dolly_Llama ( 267016 ) on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @01:07PM (#11410184) Homepage
            The major theme in the first part of the Bush presidency was the wholesale overturning of everything Clinton. Entire bodies of work were tossed aside because the Republicans saw them a priori to be incorrect. While it might be good to clean house, nothing was done in the counter-terrorism arena to set a better, or even new policy. How much effort was expended in the counter-terrorism effort between the inauguration and 9/11 even in the face of memos like the PDB. Not enough apparently.

            As far as records go, some are more secretive than others. Bush pegs the meter. Everything is considered national security or otherwise privileged. Even more suspicious is the extending of secrecy in the Presidential Records Act of 2001 just as the juicy bits of the Reagan Administration would have come to light. At the same time, some of the more questionable members of the Reagan Administration were getting new jobs in the Bush Administration. Poindexter comes to mind immediately, but is not the only one.
        • Bush ignoring the August 6, 2001 Daily Briefing (more than a month before the attack) is one of the most ghastly mistakes in American history.

          I remember my youth where I thought my president was the evilest thing that ever lived. Us old fogeys laugh at the kids who think Bush even breaks the halfway point on the evil scale.

          I'm guessing you're about 19, because you sure as hell didn't live through Reagan.

      • Maybe. (Score:4, Insightful)

        by jd ( 1658 ) <imipakNO@SPAMyahoo.com> on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @12:03PM (#11409359) Homepage Journal
        Part of the problem with that line of reasoning is that it becomes much harder to recognise when a problem has arisen. When problems ARE detected, it also becomes much harder to correct them, because you can't admit what it is you are correcting.


        The whole thing eventually comes down to security through obscurity - a somewhat dangerous philosophy.


        The British followed such a philosophy for years, not even admitting that MI5 and MI6 existed. Eventually, they realised that this offered zero additional protection. Those who were a threat already knew they existed and had probably infiltrated both, so the only ones being kept in the dark were the voters/taxpayers. They abandoned the cloak of secrecy and even published the name of the head of MI6. The world didn't explode, civilization didn't collapse, and people carried on pretty much as normal.


        In the case of Echelon, stating whether or not it exists wouldn't seriously hurt US national security. Those with secrets to hide are likely to already use a wide range of evasion and encryption techniques. Knowing that Echelon is out there, without knowing the details of how it works, wouldn't provide any information they wouldn't already be assuming to be true.


        What it does do is make it possible to correct any flaws in the system, as it currently exists. it wouldn't require anyone to say what those flaws were, or how the system works, but it would allow them to bill for fixing things.


        Carnivore, by all accounts, was superceded by commercial tools. Why? Did the FBI sack all of its software engineers, the day after the product went into service? Probably not. The official figures suggest that the product saw a steady decline in usefulness, which suggests that there was little or no maintenance or development. This likely started when the project was classified, as the available data suggests it had reached terminal decline by the time it was admitted to.


        There was absolutely nothing preventing the FBI from keeping Carnivore up-to-date. If they started ahead of everyone else, they should have remained ahead of everyone else. In fact, if they had programmers so good that they COULD start ahead of those who'd been working on the problem for some time, they should have INCREASED the gap between themselves and commercial vendors.


        They didn't. Well, you can hardly hire a contractor to fix an unacknowledged bug in a system you won't admit exists. The more secret you make these things, the harder it gets to get the bug reports from the users to the programmers.


        The problem with GOTS software (or hardware) is that there is an unstated assumption that problems will fix themselves if you bury them deep enough. That is why Carnivore became outdated, not some magical advancement by the commercial sector.

      • Should Osama and crew learn all of the ways that we spy on them, they are liable to change their tactics and make it that much harder for us to try to foil them. ... In short, for ANY government to function, it must have secrets and be able to keep them.

        Not at all. This is the classic security-through-obscurity argument.

        A much better approach is to come up with a strategy where you come out ahead even though the other players know what you know. In fact, it's possible to come up with strategies where yo

        • I think you need to step away from the game console for a little bit...

          Try playing a game of Warcraft where only *you* have FOW turned on. This is what it would be like if a government keeps no secrets.

          Some things do need to be secret. Determining what is keep secret is the difficult part, and unfortunately the part we have to trust our elected officials to make. ::shudder::

          Also, stop using the old "security-through-obscurity" argument. It's out of place and you don't seem to know what it really
      • The only people who knew everything about US Intelligence during the cold war worked for the KGB. Three-letter agencies succeed at keeping information away from each other, but fail miserably at keeping information away from the enemy, whomever that is.

        During Vietnam, secret agents (ie white guys in white seersucker suits and Panama jack hats) were spotted by the Vietcong about 5 minutes after their plane landed.

        Today, secret agents (ie white guys with sunglasses and a bunch of equipment) prowl the street

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:ECHELON (Score:3, Interesting)

      by PrvtBurrito ( 557287 )
      Your points are good. A case in point is the grilling today of Condi Rice by Barbara Boxer. Although it was politically motivated, Boxer did give excellent arguments and ample evidence that Dr. Rice has evaded the truth from the beginning and misled Americans when arguing Iraq was a solution to 9/11. It was kind of scary that being so excellent a manipulator (whether she was aware she was doing it or not) could, in hindsight, get her into the position of secretary of state.

    • Re:ECHELON (Score:2, Interesting)

      by crunk ( 844923 )
      My understanding of ECHELON (could be wrong) is that it is not located in the U.S. Therefore, it is not considered the U.S. spying on the U.S. It's considered the British spying on the U.S., and then sharing that information with the U.S. government (which wouldn't violate any U.S. privacy laws. Anyone else have any information on this?
      • Which is like an offshore tax haven. Nothing like violating the spirit while staying within the letter of the law.
    • Echelon happens to be a pet-peeve of mine. The reason being that those who claim to have a word list for "jamming Echelon" include the following:

      1) The word, "forcast" (SIC).
      2) The word, "virus".
      3) The word, "government".
      4) The word, "rain".
      5) The number, "69".
      6) The letter, "O".

      As a libertarian, I'm as anti-federal government on issues even aside from security and agree with you, but I'm not going to buy into a mythical system devised by those that write on a daily basis about the "illumninati" which, in
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Ever wonder why so many of the telcos that were
      encouraged to lay fiber optic cable went tits-up?
      Or why there is so much more "dark" fiber than
      "lit" fiber? Or if just maybe there was a secret
      deal between MS and the DoJ (anti-monopoly
      settlement) to make||leave holes in their OS for
      the Feds? Or where all that cash from the 2004
      election really went (like into propaganda to
      push thru the US public media outlets?)

      The FBI's "CARNIVORE" project was dropped because
      they don't need it anymore. Between all the
      securi

  • The reason why Carnivore failed... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Vexler ( 127353 ) on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @11:05AM (#11408715) Journal
    Because of tcpdump?

    Seriously, if the FBI had the resources and access to the right people, why couldn't they build Carnivore out of open-source material and not resort to "commercially available" products?

    Put another way: With modern hardware being dirt cheap and OSS getting better and better, what would it take to build a system that comes close (or even surpasses) what Carnivore had to offer?
    • And how many developers would a. work on surveillance tools in their spare time, b. admit to doing a.?
      • And how many developers would a. work on surveillance tools in their spare time, b. admit to doing a.?


        Or c. know about it?

        If the grandparent post was suggesting they just simply build it out of existing open source stuff, you could write a network utility and never know it had been rolled into this hypothetical OSS-based Carnivore.

    • And even the headline blurb points it out. Carnivore was not just a sniffing tool, it had to be able to extract massive amounts of data and then filter it to protect the privacy of people's communications. Tcpdump is not even a ballpark comparison.

    • Oh. I thought it may have been:

      A fatal exception 0E has occurred at 0028:C001539A The current application will be terminated.
    • The main reason is exactly that; lack of money, people, and resources. FBI agents that I've met are all bright, hard-working people, who work for wages that are higher than local police departments, but lower than corporate jobs.

      Despite the hollywood image, there is no war room full of MIT and CalTech graduates in T-shirts controlling a massive array of satellites, communications gear, and directing an endless supply of sunglass-wearing thugs.

      It takes a long time to get approval, get funds, and get PO's c
    • There is this myth that the people who work in the FBI agencies are really really smart.

      With the exception of forensics, I honestly don't know if the techies in the organization are even as ahead as the techies in the corporate/opensource sector.

      They say you can tell how stupid or smart someone is when they open their mouths. FBI built an intelligent reputation by not saying much.

    • This makes completed sense to anyone in the government. The government is heavily in favor of not building anything they can buy. They built Carnivore because, at the time, they couldn't buy a system that fit the requirements. Now, such systems exist so they retire their proprietary system an guy the COTS (commercial off the shelf). This is text book government procedure
    • Well, they could have just downloaded "Altivore", an open-source version of Carnivore. Of course, Altivore didn't come out until after Carnivore was released (causing the big controversy) but it was written to answer the questions of "what is the FBI snooping" and "what kinds of privacy do the other ISP customers have"? It also provided people a chance to see that it was secure, that "evil hackers" couldn't take over the Altivore box and subvert it for their own nefarious purposes.
    • Why the gov't doesn't want their security software- designed to sniff out criminals - as open source. Lets see. If it is open source then the criminals can get access to it. If the criminals have access to it they can try and figure a way around it. Yea that pretty much is a good enough reason why the gov't would want it to remain closed source/top secret.

      So to other posters who say the FBI agents aren't the brightest - you would be surprised who works in the FBI and the level of intelligence/knowledge

  • They say they've retired Carnivore.

    Why tell us? And how do we know they actually did?

    • ffs (Score:2, Funny)

      by JPelorat ( 5320 ) *
      How do we know it even existed in the first place? How do we know that there's no audio-based Carnivore? They could have the microphones trained on us RIGHT NOW!!

      The solution is obvious - you must barricade yourself in your own house, destroy the phones and televisions, and sit quietly on the couch so the thermal pickups dont register your presence. It's the only way you'll have privacy!
    • Hmmm, a good question that opens up a lot of possibilities. If I remember right, Carnivore was ostensibly installed to snoop for terrorism leads in internet communication. Telling the world it was there may have acted to discourage terrorists from using an easy to access tool like the internet for their purposes, thus keeping the technology out of most of their operations. If that's the case, why say it's gone? Either they're trying to give the impression that they now have tools just as good or better than

  • my guess... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    My guess is that
    1) too much bad publicity
    2) Existing tech can do what they want now
    3) the U.S.A.P.A.T.R.I.O.T. act let's them do more anyway.

  • The usual reason.... (Score:3, Funny)

    by old_skul ( 566766 ) on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @11:06AM (#11408732) Journal
    ....the next version came out. A new Linux kernel comes out, and you upgrade, right? I guess Carnivore 98(TM) is going off support.

  • Ingriiiiiid! (Score:5, Funny)

    by robocrop ( 830352 ) on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @11:08AM (#11408742)
    Because they went vegan.

    I blame PETA.

  • That can't be right!! (Score:5, Funny)

    by goldspider ( 445116 ) on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @11:12AM (#11408781) Homepage
    "Essentially, the media (as usual) got a bit carried away with a non-story: Carnivore was designed to protect your rights from being invaded while sniffing only suspect data."

    No, no, NO!!

    I read it on SLASHDOT!! The Gubmint wants to read my e-mail! It's part of their Total Information Awareness plot to put me in JAIL! They want to label me a TERRORIST and send me to GITMO!!

    Don't tell me it's not true! It's on the INTERNET for crying out loud!

    • You're clearly not paranoid enough to post on slashdot.

      The implication here is that Carnivore was only being used because they had to respect your rights. Post-PATRIOT act, they don't have to bother with that, and are now just happily reading *everything*. Of COURSE the government wants to know how many questions you asked that guy selling Star Wars Action Figures on ebay. It's important in the fight against terrorism.

  • I'm not sure about the rest of you but... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by b00st ( 843746 ) on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @11:13AM (#11408794)
    When I stop using a system it is usually because I have something better.

  • Little do we know... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Garyman_2000 ( 64209 ) on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @11:15AM (#11408822)
    The government has actually contracted with the makers of such programs as:
    -Gator
    -CoolWebSearch
    -ISTbar
    -and Internet Optimizer ........

  • RTFA...this is not a good thing (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Slightly Askew ( 638918 ) on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @11:17AM (#11408844) Journal
    You're rejoicing that the FBI retired Carnivore. What Carnivore allowed was the collection of information, then the decryption and analysis of that data with a court order. They retired it because USA PATRIOT allows them to just collect it the good old fashioned way...no encryption, no court order. Whomever, whenever they want. The difference is that now they can look for suspicious activity via eavesdropping instead of first having a suspicion and confirming it via eavesdropping. You are celebrating that the FBI has thrown away their lock picks and not realizing that Congress has removed all your doors.

  • Scary (Score:3, Interesting)

    by A beautiful mind ( 821714 ) on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @11:20AM (#11408872)
    "Carnivore was dropped because, as of two years ago, the available tools met the necessary privacy standards, as Prof. Kerr noted in his article about the PATRIOT Act published at the time."

    Does this mean that instead of using a more privacy friendly tool (i never though i'll use this expression on carnivore) is NOT needed any more because of the patriot act? That's just plain scary. It's like saying "oh, instead of catching one guilty guy with good surveillance method, we just blanket-search 10'000 and we'll find our criminal that way". I hope i'm not correct with this interpetation.
    • "I hope i'm not correct with this interpetation."

      You are correct, but don't worry, it won't be abused since Congress and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (a rubber-stamp court) have complete oversight over everything the FBI does under Patriot. Honest.

      Chuck

  • My theory (Score:5, Interesting)

    by spike2131 ( 468840 ) on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @11:20AM (#11408876) Homepage
    As someone currenly job hunting in the DC/Baltimore area, I am amazed by the number of programming jobs that require security clearances. If you have a security clearace and took a couple java classes in college, government contractors will shower you with job offers. The requisite for getting a job on these projects, therefor, is not being a talented programmer, it is having a clearance that says you aren't a spy.

    The result, I'm convinced, is that they hire a lot of sub-standard programmers, who create poorly designed products at great expense. And if the product doesn't work, well, thats another $100 million of taxpayer money down the drain.

    These outfits need to either figure out a way to use better programmers who don't have security clearances, or figure out how to get good programmers cleared without a 2 year delay. Until that happens, a lot of substandard coders will contiue to write failed applications on the taxpayer dollar.
    • actually, that's not really an issue

      they can get you an "interim" clearance

      an interim secret clearance, assuming you dont have any major red-flags on your record, takes like 9 days. That lets you access 'secret' level stuff until your full investigation finishes.

      The downside is, it costs the company a ridiculous amount of money to get you put in for a clearance (thousands of dollars - I've heard 10's of thousands even), so they REALLY prefer to get people who already have a clearance.

      I guess you could

  • The gist of his argument is that... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gillbates ( 106458 ) on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @11:43AM (#11409140) Homepage Journal

    If you don't encrypt your email and web traffic, you have no "reasonable expectation" of privacy. Apparently, "addressing information" - that is, packet headers - are not a part of confidential communications, and as such, it does not represent an invasion of privacy to read them.

    While I understand his argument that PATRIOT merely made pre-existing wiretap laws apply to the internet, this fact alone doesn't make the existing laws right. For example, just knowing who called who when, even without revealing the details of content, does significantly invade one's privacy. In these times when someone can be detained simply because they "may have knowledge of a criminal act", divulging the websites a person visits is still too dangerous. Someone concerned about the rise of radical Islam could easily be detained as a "potential terrorist" simply because they did some independent research on Islam using the internet. Even scanning addressing information alone is too much power for a government in which the mere declaration that one is an "enemy combatant" can be used to arbitrarily deny one's civil liberties.

    • There is one problem with your argument, that simply visiting the sites makes you someone that they instantly label as an enemy combatant. It doesn't. As much as researching money laundering, doesn't makes you a drug dealer.

      Even under the PATRIOT act, there are still checks and balances, some cases the government wins, others it loses. The PATRIOT act allowing the government to streamline the process when dealing with terrorists, which scatter alot more quickly than other criminals.

  • I know!! I know!! (Score:3, Funny)

    by jamesdood ( 468240 ) on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @11:46AM (#11409184)
    They retired it because it ran on NT4.0 ....

  • Conspiracy Theorists? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by DuBey79 ( 832295 )
    Please tell me that the owners of this site are not only hosting the site as a place for conspiracy theory... It disturbes me that one of the first article on the site references The Onion. -M@
  • ...saying "We're not going to use it anymore so you can stop worrying about it. *wink, wink*"?

  • Hi! I'm from the FBI. (Score:3, Funny)

    by dteichman2 ( 841599 ) on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @11:55AM (#11409284) Homepage
    We retired Carnivore so we could bring in Omnivore. Never would we use the Patriot Act for frivolously putting airplane-taggers in prison, or anything else that could be considered stupid and a waste of government funds/money or abusive to the general population.

    We just came out with Omnivore, essentially Carnivore II. It's made-up of a massive Xbox cluster (that's what we get when we contract it to Microsoft) and has every major exchange hooked into it. It's also the reason people seem to be fascinated with Area 51. Please note that all those old Russion MIGs and freaky green, glowing lights were just cover (the green lights were Das Blinkinlights while we were experimenting with BeOS).

    Please note that Carnivore II is currently intercepting the nude photos that your GF is sending you and FBI agents are probably posting them up in the office right now. Also, it is more than capable of intercepting every e-mail with the word terrorist, seeing as how the Bush Administration would rather that you use the words "Men Of Extreme Evil" so as not to let them win by even acknowleging their presence on Earth. So if you even use the word "terror," we will come after you in your sleep and put you in GITO forever, then you will need to put up with endlessly being forced to dance in front of the other "Men Of Extreme Evil." Thank you for your understanding in this matter. We apologize for any confusion. Remember, Uncle Sam is just trying to decide what's best for YOU!

  • Wasn't used very much (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rufey ( 683902 ) on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @11:56AM (#11409287)
    According to MSNBC, the FBI wouldn't have used Carnivor all that much if they were still using it.

    he 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.

    Carnivor was not a system designed to watch Internet traffic 24/7/365 and flag stuff that looked like potential usefull data on random people. It was used to monitor people who were already under investigation.

    I don't hear many people cry foul over a regular telephone wiretap, which is done for the same reasons under the same circumstances - they wiretap telephones of people who are already under investigation (I realize that Eschelon is different, but Eschelon is not a telephone wiretap on a suspect's phone. Its a wiretap on all communications, or so some people claim).

    And the Patriot Act does require a court order to do most things. Its just that its not the courts that we think about. Its a secret court. There have been articles on the very subject.

    I don't believe that the FBI simply randomly picks people to monitor and do searches of houses at random, etc. There is some "oversight", although to most of us, that "oversight" is secret (yes, that can lead to abuse).

  • Or perhaps it has served its purpose. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by porpnorber ( 851345 ) on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @11:58AM (#11409306)
    ...Or perhaps it has served its purpose. By now an entire generation of mathematical and computational linguists have been diverted, through government control of funding and its indirect global effects, from looking at language structure and semantics (using verifiable models, unlike, I am sad to say, many 'theoretical' linguists) that might eventually lead to plausible natural language understanding, into surfacy statistical methods useful for scanning vast amounts of text efficiently. Call me paranoid, but in my mind this serves a number of potential purposes:
    • it tightens government control of research in general
    • it shifts focus away from 'obscure' languages and promotes isolationism and (ironically) thereby supports cultural imperialism
    • likewise, it diverts effort away from tools that might be useful in translation
    • it diverts from work that could in principle radically improve text compression ratios (which is mathematically more important for secrecy than improved crypto algorithms, though this is rarely pointed out)
    • it helps refocus academia on providing short term benefits to military, intelligence and industrial applications and away from its own programme of building abstract and enabling knowledge.
    (At the risk of antagonising the community here I should also point out that Carnivore and its successors probably share with slashdot a huge problem that is widely perceived as a feature: that it actively reinforces its user community's notions of relevance. Surfacy, automated filtering is of course even more likely than human moderation to classify material by its rhetorical style than its actual content. In politics, indeed in support of any culture or subculture, this is perhaps a wonderful thing; in intelligence, a two edged sword of the worst kind - one that may explain how a number of things manage to slip under the radar.) But I can only leave you to judge.

  • Why, exactly, should we believe this? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by dpbsmith ( 263124 ) on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @11:59AM (#11409324) Homepage
    Because he's a professor?

    Because it sounds credible (which it does?)

    Because he says "I was in government at the time the story broke?"

    Should I believe everything Theodore Postol says? He's a professor, too.

    This story is nothing but a set of assertions. There's not so much as a single citation to back any of this up.
    • This story is nothing but a set of assertions. There's not so much as a single citation to back any of this up.

      How would you go about proving that you're *not* using something? Any "citation" would just be the assertion of someone else, necessarily failing your test.

    • Not to mention that blog is famous for leaning on the right side of politics, so its no surprise they would praise the Carnivore system and call the complaints of civil libertarians trivial.

      Its just some mostly Republican law junkies posting their opinions in a very fast and loose style. No citations, very little to oversight, no comments, etc. Its how not to run a political blog, but right wing blogs tend to have that kind of format (just tell us what to think!) as open commenting tends to hurt their car
  • Most net traffic is P2P these days.

    So they can safely watch most of it pretty easily...

    and for minimal cash be able to say they watch the majority of web traffic.

    If that's effective or not... that's another story.

    But the FBI is just a government organization. It's goal is to keep the public calm and stay within budget. That's it's only goal.
  • This spin, that somehow "proves" that Carnivore is no more, comes from Kerr, the guy whose "Patriot" Act marketing is linked from this story's summary. It dates from the time the Act was being "debated" in Congress,; called "Internet Surveillance Law After the USA Patriot Act: The Big Brother That Isn't". We all know now that it is, and that Carnivore is part of it. So this is all just a sign of both the big budgets the FBI has for lifecycle spin control these days, and how important it is that we believe t
  • "The Volokh Conspiracy" Doesn't appear to be accepting incoming connections anymore. For something labeled as a conspiracy that's certainly interesting. Course its probably just a slashdotting, but it's not letting me in w/ a Slashdot referral or otherwise.

  • Wiretapping has been outsourced to Verisign (Score:5, Informative)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @01:04PM (#11410123) Homepage
    Verisign, the first name in wiretapping, offers their NetDiscovery [verisign.com] service to law enforcement. In their words,
    • Complete Lawful Intercept Service

      VeriSign's NetDiscovery service provides telecom network operators, cable operators, and Internet service providers with a streamlined service to help meet requirements for assisting government agencies with lawful interception and subpoena requests for subscriber records. Net Discovery is the premier turnkey service for provisioning, access, delivery, and collection of call information from operators to law enforcement agencies (LEAs).

    Verisign does this for telephony by using (or abusing) their control of Signalling System 7. [verisign.com], the routing network for telephony. When a wiretap request comes in, they change the SS7 routing data to route calls to/from the phone of interest to their call monitoring center, from which the call is then routed outward again. To the telephone network, this looks like call forwarding. This approach requires no additional hardware at the wireline carrier; it's done through the existing SS7 infrastructure. (Incidentally, this should increase latency, depending on how far you are from Northern Virginia. But they may have remote monitoring centers by now to cut that down.)

    Verisign also offers wiretapping services for mobile phones [verisign.com], and cable-based VoIP [monster-isp.com].

    Efforts are underway to integrate NetDiscovery capability into future Cisco routers. [phoneplusmag.com]

    Verisign takes the carrier or ISP completely out of the loop. [verisign.com] "Authorized Government agencies" can submit their wiretapping request to Verisign, where they are "reviewed by a paralegal" and then implemented. There's no need for the carrier or ISP to even be aware of the wiretap.

    So that's why there's no need for Carnivore any more.

    Verisign - your full service wiretapping solution provider.

  • For the same reason the CIA retired the Blackbird (Score:3, Insightful)

    by karlandtanya ( 601084 ) on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @01:30PM (#11410546)
    They have something better. (Sattelites in the case of the SR-71).

  • McAfee & commercial vendors are the new Carniv (Score:3, Informative)

    by glassesmonkey ( 684291 ) on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @04:08PM (#11412512) Homepage Journal
    The FBI is just turning to contractors and newer technology than maintaining the old Carnivore.
    McAfee Inc has sold its McAfee Research assets to US defense contractor Sparta Inc for an undisclosed sum, after post-9/11 politics made much of its research output classified.
    13 Jan 2005, 09:39 GMT -
    "In response to rapidly changing national directions, much of the content of McAfee Research's efforts has transitioned from historically unclassified research to classified R&D activities," the firm said.
    The unit has previously worked with government agencies such as DARPA and the NSA on projects including technologies such as forensics, intrusion prevention and malicious code defense.
    Also, the budget for FBI Carnivore is probably now under Homeland Security who is outsourcing such activites.
    According to leading market analyst Input Inc., the federal government will increase its spending on information technology in 2005 for the eleventh consecutive year in a row.

    Outsourcing, homeland security, and the nation's global war on terrorism are driving a significant increase in spending. For that reason, the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security alone will be spending in excess of $32 billion this year on information technology,"
    FOSE 2005 kicks off the buying season for the 25,000 government IT and acquisition professionals who plan their major buys for the year.
    Also, you would think the FBI looks into child pornography, but...
    Child pornography has become a huge problem for DoD investigators, accounting for as much as 50 percent of the criminal digital evidence processing work done by the DoD's Defense Cyber Crime Center (DC3). The DoD blocked and traced 60,000 intrusion attempts on its unclassified networks in 2004, and wrestles with spam, illicit pornography and other common Internet threats.

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