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It wasn't a good weekend for FBI computer systems.

Report #1, Carnivore scrapped:

FBI retires Carnivore
Saturday, January 15, 2005
The Register

FBI surveillance experts have put their once-controversial Carnivore Internet surveillance tool out to pasture, preferring instead to use commercial products to eavesdrop on network traffic, according to documents released Friday.

Two reports to Congress obtained by the Washington-based Electronic Privacy Information Center under the Freedom of Information Act reveal that the FBI didn't use Carnivore, or its rebranded version "DCS-1000," at all during the 2002 and 2003 fiscal years. Instead, the bureau turned to unnamed commercially-available products to conduct Internet surveillance thirteen times in criminal investigations in that period.

Carnivore became a hot topic among civil liberations, some network operators and many lawmakers in 2000, when an ISP's legal challenge brought the surveillance tool's existence to light. One controversy revolved around the FBI's legally-murky use of the device to obtain e-mail headers and other information without a wiretap warrant -- an issue Congress resolved by explicitly legalizing the practice in the 2001 USA PATRIOT Act.

Developed by a contractor, Carnivore was a customizable packet sniffer that, in conjunction with other FBI tools, could capture email messages, and reconstruct web pages exactly as a surveillance target saw them while surfing the web. FBI agents lugged it with them to ISPs that lacked their own spying capability.

Report #2, Virtual Case File abandoned:

FBI Rejects Its New Case File Software
Database Project Has Cost Nearly $170 Million
Friday, January 14, 2005
The Washington Post

The FBI said yesterday that a nearly $170 million computer system intended to help agents share data about terrorist threats and other criminal cases is seriously deficient and will be largely abandoned before it is launched.

The software, known as Virtual Case File, was supposed to provide a modern database for storing and indexing all case information and entries by agents, enabling them to share files electronically and search easily for links between cases that might not otherwise seem connected.

But the FBI has concluded that the system, the latest version of which was provided by Science Applications International Corp. of San Diego last month, is already outdated. New contractors are examining whether any portions of the system can be salvaged, and are determining how much it will cost to complete the project, the FBI said.

For more information about Carnivore and its demise, see EPIC and the EPIC Carnivore Page. You might also want to bookmark the EDUCAUSE resource page for CALEA, the "Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act".

For more on the $170 million "train wreck" (so-called by Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont), I recommend reading the full text of the Washington Post article excerpted above. Other independent reports:

• New FBI Software May Be Unusable (Los Angeles Times)
• F.B.I. May Scrap Vital Overhaul of Its Outdated Computer System (The New York Times)
• FBI Computer Error: System Not Found (Slate)
• FBI Says $170 Million IT System Worthless (IT Solutions Guide)

Y'gotta love those headline writers!

Both of these stories are likely to get much more attention in the upcoming Congressional session. A name you might listen for is Zalmai Azmi, FBI CIO, who was appointed last May shortly after the 9-11 Commission criticized the obsolescence of FBI computer systems.

Stay tuned.

Steve

This message reflects the opinions of the author, and not necessarily those of EDUCAUSE or its members.