FBI Still Hunting With Carnivore

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation is still developing its Carnivore Internet surveillance tool, according to FBI documents obtained by the Electronic Privacy Information Center through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.

The FBI is now creating "Enhanced Carnivore" under a contract that runs through January that calls for the development of two new versions of the system, says David Sobel, general counsel at EPIC.

The documents, released to EPIC on October 2, are the first of several installments that EPIC expects to receive as a result of its FOIA lawsuit over the controversial Carnivore, whose legality is being investigated by the U.S. Congress and questioned by privacy advocates (see "FBI Forks Over First Carnivore Documents").

More than a third of the information in the 565 documents turned over to EPIC have been blackened out, including some pages that show only a page number. Still, EPIC officials have discovered some details not previously known about the system.

"The congressional attention thus far has focused on the history of Carnivore," Sobel says. "The questions the documents raise have more to do with the future of the system."

Carnivore May Feed on Phone Calls Next

The documents show that a possible feature of future versions will be interception of Voice Over IP communications, a technology commonly used to make phone calls using the Internet. However, much of the details about the new features were redacted, Sobel says. The documents also clarify Carnivore's capabilities beyond e-mail surveillance, such as the system's ability to extract packets that contain information about the Web sites an individual viewed and "presumably anything that is being communicated," Sobel says.

The FBI spokesperson who handles inquiries about Carnivore could not be reached for comment late Thursday.

EPIC filed the FOIA lawsuit after the FBI earlier this year revealed the existence of Carnivore. The lawsuit seeks the public release of all FBI records concerning Carnivore, including the source code, other technical details, and legal analyses addressing the potential privacy implications of the technology. The source code of the Carnivore system was withheld in the first batch of documents (see "Does Carnivore Eat Privacy Rights?").

Carnivore has outraged not only EPIC, but also the American Civil Liberties Union and some members of Congress. The FBI has used it in at least 25 criminal and national security investigations, according to the FBI, which maintains the system is legal.

The documents in EPIC's hands also confirm that Carnivore was conceived under the name Omnivore in February 1997. It was proposed originally for a Solaris X86 computer. Omnivore was replaced by Carnivore running on a Windows NT-based computer in June 1999. Other parts of the documents include reviews of tests for performance, and recovery from attacks and crashes for both Omnivore and Carnivore. Carnivore consists of a PC running Windows and proprietary software.

The FBI has said it has 3000 pages of material related to Carnivore in its files. It has agreed to disclose records to EPIC every 45 days. The next installment is expected in the middle of next month.