Carnivore and Echelon were apparently developed and implemented in the 1990s, long before 9/11/2001 and
long before the current debate
over wiretaps
and domestic surveillance.
Much of the information on this page is obsolete by now, and the technology that was used has most likely
been replaced by something more effective, with another name. But it is interesting to know that the
federal government has been working on the idea of monitoring every electronic communication -- nationwide
if not worldwide -- for at least 20 years.
Subsections:
Einstein
Carnivore
Tempest
Echelon
Einstein
Einstein is a more recent development than either Carnivore or Echelon, but
like the other two, Einstein has stayed out of the mainstream press. Among other things, the
system will monitor visits from Americans — and foreigners — visiting .gov Web
sites.
I think I can tell already where Einstein is headed: it will make it more difficult -- if not
hazardous -- for someone to compile a list like this, just
to explore and document the width and depth of the overgrown federal government.
Einstein sounds a lot like a
program called Snort, which is available at no cost. So
whatever amount Uncle Sam spent on Einstein was probably a complete waste of money.
FBI wants
widespread monitoring of 'illegal' Internet activity. The FBI on Wednesday [4/23/2008] called
for new legislation that would allow federal police to monitor the Internet for "illegal activity." The
suggestion from FBI Director Robert Mueller, which came during a House of Representatives Judiciary Committee
hearing, appears to go beyond a current plan to monitor traffic on federal-government networks. Mueller
seemed to suggest that the bureau should have a broad "omnibus" authority to conduct monitoring and surveillance
of private-sector networks as well. The surveillance should include all Internet traffic, Mueller said,
"whether it be .mil, .gov, .com — whichever network you're talking about."
Einstein is the
network monitoring tool used by the United States federal government's Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Einstein
is used to automatically monitor and analyze Internet traffic when it moves in and out of federal computer networks,
filtering packets at the perimeter. … Participating agencies have used Einstein in network gateways since 2004. In
conjunction with the Trusted Internet Connection (TIC) initiative launch in 2008, DHS mandated that all federal agencies
must use Einstein.
Congress worries that .gov monitoring will spy
on Americans. A new Bush administration plan to capture and analyze traffic on all federal
government networks in real time is generating privacy worries from congressional Democrats and Republicans
alike. At a hearing convened here Thursday by the U.S. House of Representatives Homeland Security
Committee, politicians directed pointed questions to Department of Homeland Security officials about their
plans to expand an existing "intrusion detection" system known as Einstein.
Doubletalk alert:
Visiting a web site is not an intrusion.
Einstein keeps an eye on agency networks.
DHS officials named the program Einstein because they think their monitoring program is smart. Since 2004,
Einstein has monitored participating agencies' network gateways for traffic patterns that indicate the presence
of computer worms or other unwanted traffic. By collecting traffic information summaries at agency gateways,
Einstein gives US-CERT analysts and participating agencies a big-picture view of bad activity on federal networks.
Einstein and U.S.
cybersecurity. At a hearing last week on Capitol Hill, officials faced close, skeptical questioning
about the program, an intrusion detection system that will automatically monitor and analyze Internet traffic
into and out of federal computer networks in real time — allowing officials at the Department of
Homeland Security to scan for anomalies that might represent hackers or other intruders trying to gain access
or steal data.
House legislators
rip Bush's Cyber Initiative plan. The initiative is a long-range plan to upgrade the security of
the federal government's networks and comprises a number of separate proposals, most notably an overhaul and
expansion of the government's intrusion detection system, known as Einstein. Currently, Einstein is simply
a passive traffic-monitoring system that records basic data such as the originating IP address of a packet, its
size and where the packet came from and where it is headed.
Carnivore
Carnivore is an e-mail wiretap system being developed and used by the FBI to read messages being
circulated amongst suspected criminals and terrorists... and everybody else. There is a great deal of
concern being expressed nationwide, and not just by privacy fanatics, because it is likely that such
eavesdropping occurs before there is any other evidence that the affected individuals have done anything
illegal. It would be much less of an issue were it not for a little technicality called the
Fourth Amendment. The FBI is relying on the public (and the mainstream news media) to ignore charges
such as the ACLU's statement that Carnivore represents "an unprecedented power grab that threatens the privacy
of all Americans."
There is good news about Carnivore, however. Recently I attended a meeting of
local computer security experts (legitimate professionals, really, not the guys at the 2600
meeting) and the moderator of the program offered his opinion that "Carnivore is
not very effective."
Don't
be fooled: DCS1000 is still a "Carnivore" at heart. After a
flurry of controversy over the FBI's Carnivore system for intercepting e-mail, the
feds have moved promptly to address concerns -- by
renaming it "DCS1000".
DCS1000: The Device Formerly
Known as Carnivore: Despite some reports indicating that the name is an acronym for "data
collection system," an FBI spokesperson told Reuters that it "doesn't stand for anything."
Carnivore changes name, enters
witness protection program: Carnivore, the FBI's controversial Internet communications monitoring
system, is undergoing a makeover. First, the FBI is going to pull out its teeth, and re-christen Carnivore
DCS1000, which, in our esteem, is just a little too close to HAL2000…
FBI axes Carnivore, eats investment.
The FBI has abandoned its custom-built Internet surveillance technology, dubbed Carnivore, and is now using
commercial software to eavesdrop on computer network traffic during investigations of suspected criminals,
terrorists and spies. In addition, it's asking Internet service providers to conducting wiretaps on
targeted customers, when necessary. … The FBI didn't disclose how much it had spent on Carnivore, but
outside experts estimate expenditures at somewhere between $6 illion and $15 million.
Carnivore was an
Internet surveillance system developed for the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) so that they could monitor the
electronic transmissions of criminal suspects. Critics, however, charged that Carnivore did not include appropriate
safeguards to prevent misuse and might violate the constitutional rights of the individual. The Electronic Privacy
Information Center (EPIC) reported in early 2005 that the FBI had replaced Carnivore with other, unspecified surveillance
software from commercial sources. Such software usually includes a packet sniffer.
FBI retires its Carnivore. 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 [1/14/2005].
FBI Abandons Web Surveillance
Technology. The FBI has effectively abandoned its custom-built Internet surveillance technology,
once known as Carnivore, designed to read e-mails and other online communications among suspected criminals,
terrorists and spies, according to bureau oversight reports submitted to Congress.
[That's a misleading headline. The FBI hasn't abandoned
their web surveillance technology, they have just changed to
another make and model of software.]
Read this:
Feds raid orchid-grower's home: George
Norris said he believes his troubles may stem from the US Fish and Wildlife Service's use
of CARNIVORE, a government system that can tap into computer e-mails. "They showed
me page three of a five-page e-mail from several years ago where I was being offered smuggled
plants," he said. "They did not show me pages four and five, which were my answer to this
fellow, telling him we would not buy any such plants that were undocumented. This was so
old that I don't even remember this e-mail.
Editor's Note:
Please see the George Norris subsection on
this page for more details
on this case.
Inside DCSNet, the FBI's Nationwide
Eavesdropping Network. The $10 million DCS-3000 client, also known as Red Hook, handles
pen-registers and trap-and-traces, a type of surveillance that collects signaling information —
primarily the numbers dialed from a telephone — but no communications content. DCS-6000,
known as Digital Storm, captures and collects the content of phone calls and text messages for full wiretap
orders. A third, classified system, called DCS-5000, is used for wiretaps targeting spies or terrorists.
FBI turns to broad new wiretap method.
Instead of recording only what a particular suspect is doing, agents conducting investigations appear to be
assembling the activities of thousands of Internet users at a time into massive databases, according to current
and former officials. That database can subsequently be queried for names, e-mail addresses or
keywords. … "What they're doing is even worse than Carnivore," said Kevin Bankston, a staff attorney at the
Electronic Frontier Foundation who attended the Stanford event. "What they're doing is intercepting
everyone and then choosing their targets."
FBI's Carnivore-lies may have blown bin
Laden inquiry. Fundamental design flaws in the FBI's infamous Carnivore packet sniffer have led
to the destruction of evidence related to a suspect possibly involved in Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda network
which had been obtained legally under a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant, the watchdog group EPIC
has learned.
Carnivore is a surveillance tool for
data networks. At the heart of the project is CarnivorePE, a software application that listens to all
Internet traffic (email, web surfing, etc.) on a specific local network. Next, CarnivorePE serves this
data stream to interfaces called "clients." These clients are designed to animate, diagnose, or interpret
the network traffic in various ways. Use CarnivorePE to run Carnivore clients from your own desktop, or
use it to make your own clients.
Echelon: The US government has long conducted
extensive eavesdropping overseas, as part of the National Security Agency's foreign intelligence collection
activities. This foreign surveillance occurs outside the normal limitations of the Constitution.
With the globalization of communications, the overseas snooping activities of the US and its allies have
attracted renewed attention and concern.
Congress Passes "Roving
Wiretaps," Expands Surveillance Authority. Oct 1998, in a closed-door
manuever, controversial "roving wiretap" provisions were added to the Intelligence
authorization bill and passed by the Congress. Prevoiusly, wiretapping law allowed
tapping of a particular person's phones. The new provisions dramatically expanded
current authority by allowing taps on any phone used by, or "proximate" to, the person being
tapped — no matter whose phone it is. Such a broad law invites
abuse. In 1996, the full House of Representatives had rejected these
provisions after an open and vigorous debate. But in 1998, behind closed
doors, a conference committee added the provisions to the important
Intelligence Authorization Conference Report.
Does Technology Threaten Our
Privacy, Morality and Freedom of Religious Expression? Two new powerful
multi-billion dollar eavesdropping tools originally invented to spy on the Russians have now
been turned on the American people. [They're talking about Echelon and Tempest, although
Carnivore is also discussed.]
Carnivore
page at COTSE dot net, which is apparently a privacy-enhanced
email service.
Carnivore,
Altivore, Echelon: In terms of privacy concerns as well as raw technological
power, Carnivore looks like a toy compared to Echelon. Echelon is almost certainly
the world's most sophisticated network monitoring system and, if rumors are to be believed,
anyone who feels uncomfortable with the secrecy surrounding Carnivore should feel downright
paranoid where Echelon is concerned.
Where Carnivore
Lives: The FBI has already employed Carnivore in a number of cases. By law,
the details of these investigations have generally not been released publicly. The only ISP
positively identified as cooperating with such an investigation, in fact, is Earthlink.
Independent Technical Review of the
Carnivore System: Carnivore is a software-based Internet Protocol (IP) packet
sniffer that can select and record a defined subset of the traffic on the network to which
it is attached. Packets can be selected based on IP address, protocol, or, in the case
of email, on the user names in the TO and FROM fields. In limited cases, packets can be
selected based on their content. Packets can be recorded 'in their entirety (full mode)
or recording can be limited to addressing information (pen mode), i.e., IP addresses and
usermames.
Why Carnivore Is Bad For You: The
FBI can hardly be trusted to conduct their investigations with proper handling and precision, but even if they
could, Carnivore/DCS1000 will end up hurting innocent people. The amount of guesswork involved in a
sweeping search like the type Carnivore/DCS1000 does insures that many "dead ends" and "bad leads" will be
pursued. What this means is that the FBI will inevitably end up investigating (including search, seizure,
intimidation, prosecution, etc.) innocent people.
Confounding Carnivore: How to Protect Your
Online Privacy. Ever since the FBI confirmed the existence of their Internet wiretapping device — a
device which they named Carnivore — cyberprivacy activists have been up in arms. Carnivore promised
to be their worst nightmare: a technology that could track and record every email sent, every Web page browsed,
every chat room visited.
Carnivore, Altivore, Echelon:
Three big names in the world of network monitoring. In terms of privacy concerns as well as raw
technological power, Carnivore looks like a toy compared to Echelon. Echelon is almost certainly the
world's most sophisticated network monitoring system and, if rumors are to be believed, anyone who feels uncomfortable
with the secrecy surrounding Carnivore should feel downright paranoid where Echelon is concerned.
Carnivore, Sniffers, and
You: The Carnivore network diagnostic tool (sniffer) may be peeking at your email. This
article offers the scoop on the FBI's latest crime-fighting tool.
Sniffer —
A Definition: Network sniffers monitor data without altering its content. Sniffers are now commonly
used by governments, corporations, by hackers, and by students.
FBI's Carnivore hunts in a pack.
Carnivore, the FBI's controversial e-mail snooping program, is part of covert surveillance triad known inside
the bureau as the "DragonWare Suite," according to recently declassified documents. The documents also
outline how the DragonWare Suite is more than simply an e-mail snooping program: It's capable of
reconstructing the Web surfing trail of someone under investigation.
FBI
Statement for the Record on the Carnivore Diagnostic Tool
The Backdoor, the Rogue Agent, and the Mishap:
the Hidden Dangers of Carnivore. This paper is intended to provide convincing reasons, beyond the
4th Amendment argument, why Carnivore is a law enforcement tool that we all should reject.
The preceding article appears at a web site called Stop Carnivore Now.
Carnivore FAQ (Sample: It is important
to note that Carnivore is a passive wiretap. It does not interfere with communication. Some news reports falsely
claim that Carnivore interposes itself into the stream, first grabbing data, then passing it along.
The Legal Authorities of the National Security
Agency: U.S. Representative Bob Barr asserts, "While Americans remain solidly in support of a
strong foreign intelligence gathering capability, they are not willing to do so at the expense of their
domestic civil liberties."
Colleges
Protest Call to Upgrade Online Systems. The federal government, vastly extending the
reach of an 11-year-old law, is requiring hundreds of universities, online communications companies
and cities to overhaul their Internet computer networks to make it easier for law enforcement
authorities to monitor e-mail and other online communications.
Carnivore and Reno: Janet Reno's
answers to questions about Carnivore in her weekly press conferences at the Justice Department.
Clinton Favors Computer
Snooping: The Clinton administration wants to be able to send federal agents armed with search
warrants into homes to copy encryption keys and implant secret back doors onto computers.
Congress, Privacy Rights Activists Blast
Carnivore: Fears that the FBI is going too far with its technological invasions of communications
systems were hardly soothed when Dr. Donald M. Kerr, the director of the FBI's laboratory division revealed
what the bureau plans for the future.
FBI Shows Off Carnivore: FBI
officials defended Carnivore by telling hand-picked media representatives that the system is necessary "because
some smaller ISPs do not have the capability to provide the data that law enforcement needs quickly," the
Washington Post reported.
Feds Deny Asking ISPs to Watch
E-mails: Last month, the European Union passed a resolution that would require all ISPs to store
for up to seven years e-mail message headers, Web-surfing histories, chat logs, pager records, phone and fax
connections, passwords, and more. Already, Germany, France, Belgium, and Spain have drafted laws that
comply with the directive. Technology experts say the U.S. federal government may try to do the same
thing using the vast law enforcement allowances provided under the USA Patriot Act.
Carnivore: Interview
with Rep. Bob Barr (R - Ga.): When the FBI launched its latest crime-fighting project, known by
the name Carnivore, a lot of people worried that this new system could be dangerous - not for crooks, but for
innocent people.
Outside Review of Carnivore Planned:
The Justice Department is moving swiftly to get an independent evaluation of the FBI's Carnivore e-mail intercept
system, even as the system is denounced by congressional Republicans and civil libertarians as a threat to
privacy on the Internet.
Excellent!
The Fourth
Amendment and Carnivore: The Carnivore system appears to exacerbate the over collection of
personal information by collecting more information than it is legally entitled to collect under traditional
pen register and trap and trace laws.
Now It's Carnivore 2.0 ... Even 3.0:
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is now describing its Carnivore software that peeks into e-mail accounts
without individual computer users' being aware as just "the tip of the iceberg."
White House Wants Cyber-Snoop
Rules: The Clinton-Gore administration will propose legislation putting e-mail surveillance on
legal footing akin to phone taps — but leaving the FBI's "Carnivore" spying intact.
FBI: Federal Bureau of
Intrusion? "Carnivore" sifts through all online communications, such as e-mail or website traffic
looking for illegal activity. The problem is that it collects all communications, legal and illegal, thus
violating the privacy of citizens who are just innocently and legally conversing online with family or friends
or who happen to be surfing the Net.
More DOJ Delays in Carnivore Investigation
Carnivore FOIA: A Justice Department Joke
EPIC Carnivore FOIA Documents
GOP Wants to Pull Carnivore's Teeth:
What has upset so many people who use the Internet to communicate is the new high-tech FBI device — called
"Carnivore" because it finds the "meat" of e-mail messages. It enables law enforcement officials to sort
through every bit of everybody's e-mail messages to find those of questionable legality.
Testimony of Robert Corn-Revere, April 6,
2000: "I believe it is vital for Congress now to examine the Fourth Amendment implications of
electronic surveillance on the Internet and the World Wide Web. As the United States Supreme Court
explained in 1997, the Internet is a unique and wholly new medium of worldwide human communication."
Some of the technical aspects of
Carnivore: Recent press reports have disclosed the existence of an FBI Internet wiretap device,
known as "Carnivore". This is troubling for many reasons, not the least of which is that it is unclear
just what the software and hardware does or how it works. In the U.S., there are serious legal
restrictions on the use of wiretaps by police agencies. The Supreme Court has consistently held that
wiretaps qualify as searches under the Fourth Amendment.
Government Privacy
Violators: These days it's hard to find a politician without some plan to impose
new privacy regulations on business. The physicians should first try to heal themselves. Our
various levels of government have a long and undistinguished record of disrespecting our
personal privacy.
Report
Says Carnivore Is Tame; Critics Skeptical: The FBI developed Carnivore
in 1997 to monitor the activities of suspects who communicate using e-mail, much the
way the agency uses wiretaps and pen registers to monitor telephone calls and capture
caller information. Privacy advocates have expressed concern the tool is too powerful,
too invasive and a potential danger to civil liberties.
Carnivore - E-mail Invasion "I hope that
you will research this subject more. Contact your ISP and urge them to refuse to accept Carnivore on their
system. It is not a question of whether you have anything to hide. Your right to privacy is at
stake. If this is allowed it can only snowball."
Help Kill the Carnivore!: Carnivore is a
hardware-software device that the FBI secretly developed at its lab in Quantico, Va. Almost immediately after
the existence of this project was disclosed in a July 11 Wall Street Journal article, public outrage
began to mount.
Ashcroft to Chew On
Carnivore: John Ashcroft, President Bush's pick for attorney general, says he'll take a long,
hard look at Carnivore if he gets the job. [January 2001]
FBI Drags its Heels on Carnivore Papers:
Get a court order to monitor a specific POP mailbox -- but don't skim all the messages hoping to find something
interesting.
Putting a Leash on Carnivore:
House Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, says Internet surveillance can undermine "the minimum expectation that individuals
have that their personal electronic communications will not be examined by law enforcement devices unless a
specific court warrant has been issued.'
Why Carnivore/DCS1000 Is Bad For You:
Here are some reasons why Carnivore/DCS1000 is bad for America, and, more specifically, bad for
you. [For example,] it's Unconstitutional.
ACLU Slams Biased Review Team Thumbs-Up for Carnivore
EPIC Sues to See Carnivore
Code: The Electronic Privacy Information Center has accused the FBI of sandbagging its requests
for documents pertaining to the FBI's Carnivore e-mail snooping system.
Congress Isn't Swallowing
Carnivore: Officials from the FBI and the U.S. Department of Justice faced a skeptical -- and
at times downright hostile -- House Judiciary Committee during an oversight hearing on the constitutional
issues raised by the FBI's Carnivore electronic monitoring program.
A kinder, gentler
Carnivore? Any organization agreeing to review Carnivore is forbidden from publishing any
independent comments about the program.
Armey of One Takes on Carnivore:
One year after hearings in which the Clinton Administration vigorously defended the FBI's email-tapping Carnivore
surveillance system, Rep. Dick Armey, R-Texas, is asking the new attorney general to reopen the debate.
Carnivore Panel Called Insiders' Stacked
Deck: "This Department of Justice proposal has confirmed my fears," Armey said. "This
important issue deserves a truly independent review, not a whitewash."
FBI Gives a Little on Carnivore: The
FBI says it will conduct a privacy audit of a controversial surveillance system, but the agency won't release key
information about how Carnivore works.
Privacy Eaten Away by
Carnivore: It seems that we, the American public should trust the FBI to look at only those email
messages that directly have a bearing on a particular investigation and completely ignore all other email messages,
no matter how inflammatory they may seem.
Will Crypto Feast on
Carnivore? Do you encrypt your email before you send it? Probably not. Most
electronic mail traverses the Internet as unscrambled, easy-to-read packets of text.
ACLU: Law Needs Carnivore
Fix: An FBI spokesman said the notion that it would look at more emails than the agency is
entitled to under the law is a misunderstanding of the system's purpose and operation.
U.S. to Track Crypto
Trails: Over 2,450,000 telephone conversations were legally intercepted in 1999,
according to government statistics.
Carnivore Eats Your
Privacy: critics say the practice of intercepting the network traffic of all users, even for a
brief period of time, could run afoul of federal privacy laws and even the U.S. Constitution's prohibition on
unreasonable searches and seizure.
Carnivore Can Read Everything. "We've
been led to believe that the purpose of Carnivore is to filter and pinpoint the particular communications that the FBI is
authorized to obtain. If that's true, then why are they testing the system's ability to store and archive everything?"
Letter to Reps. Canady and Watt: The ACLU
urges the heads of the Constitution Subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee to take action on Carnivore.
Invasion of Your Privacy Has Just
Begun: “Carnivore, the most recent example of FBI snooping software, is reported to be able to
scoop up all of targeted individuals' Internet traffic, including e-mail. Carnivore is only one project
aimed at destroying America's privacy. In fact, the FBI under the Clinton administration developed an
entire series of hardware and software devices intended to monitor U.S. citizens.'
New documents disclose extent
of FBI's Web surveillance: The FBI records show the agency used its controversial Carnivore system
13 times between October 1999 and August 2000 to monitor Internet communications, and a similar device,
Etherpeek, another 11 times."
Numerous other Carnivore
links
Feds
Fail to Protect Privacy of E-mail: The federal
government has yet to implement a Supreme Court decision protecting your e-mail
privacy. That has prompted House Majority Leader Dick Armey to fire off a letter
to Attorney General John Ashcroft urging that the court be obeyed and that your
privacy be protected. Zeroing in on the FBI's “Carnivore' program, the high
court said devices that allow police technology to erode the privacy guaranteed
in the Fourth Amendment is unconstitutional.
Urge Congress to Stop the FBI's Use of Privacy-Invading
Software: In traditional wiretaps, the government is required to minimize its interception of
non-incriminating - or innocent - communications. But Carnivore does just the opposite by scanning through tens
of millions of emails and other communications from innocent Internet users as well as the targeted suspect.
Mueller Noncommittal on
Carnivore: FBI Director Robert Mueller has refused to commit to an independent review of the
agency's Carnivore surveillance system.
House leader
wants investigation of 'Carnivore': A powerful house lawmaker asked the FBI to re-examine the
extent to which its e-mail sniffing tool, "Carnivore," infringes on privacy.
Feds Fail to Protect Privacy of
E-mail: The federal government has yet to implement a Supreme Court decision protecting your
e-mail privacy. That has prompted House Majority Leader Dick Armey to fire off a letter to Attorney
General John Ashcroft urging that the court be obeyed and that your privacy be protected. Zeroing in on
the FBI's "Carnivore' program, the high court said devices that allow police technology to erode the privacy
guaranteed in the Fourth Amendment is unconstitutional.
Invasion
of Your Privacy Has Just Begun: Carnivore, the most
recent example of FBI snooping software, is reported to be able to scoop up all of targeted
individuals' Internet traffic, including e-mail. Carnivore is only one project aimed at
destroying America's privacy. In fact, the FBI under the Clinton administration developed
an entire series of hardware and software devices intended to monitor U.S. citizens.
The trouble with 'deep packet inspection'.
The data is already dismal when it comes to people peeking at your Internet travels. Twenty percent of
U.S. companies hire employees specifically to snoop at employee e-mail and 41 percent perform some kind
of e-mail monitoring, according to a survey published earlier this year by Proofpoint. Two-thirds of
companies monitor Web surfing, and 12 percent even monitor outside blog activity. Even if your
company doesn't watch you as a matter of policy, employees might be sneaking a peek anyway.
Spooks told to get used to
encrypted VoIP. A British security firm has urged the government not to impose heavy-handed
interception regulations on VoIP providers, ahead of the forthcoming consultation on communications data.
Cellcrypt, based in London, develops and sells a smartphone application that allows companies to make encrypted
VoIP calls internationally. The software can be pushed to handsets over the air, offering near-instant voice
security for workers in the field.
Senate Panel to Probe Allegations NSA
Illegally Wiretapped American Phone Calls, E-Mails. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne
Feinstein says she will investigate indications of new wiretap violations by the National Security Agency.
The Justice Department confirmed Wednesday [4/15/2009] that it had reined in the NSA's wiretapping activities in
the United States after finding out the agency had improperly accessed American phone calls and e-mails.
N.S.A.'s Intercepts Exceed Limits Set by
Congress. The National Security Agency intercepted private e-mail messages and phone calls of Americans in
recent months on a scale that went beyond the broad legal limits established by Congress last year, government officials
said in recent interviews.
Tempest
Electronic
voting machines vs Tempest technology. Tempest is a code word for
electromagnetic snooping. It's usual for military electronics to be "Tempest
hardened" in order to shield them from high-tech spying, disruptive interference,
and EMPs. It isn't an exaggeration these days to consider an election to be
a military target. In any case, a non-Tempest-hardened voting machine is likely
to leak emissions that give a suitably-equipped passer-by the details of each voter's
preferences.
The Complete, Unofficial TEMPEST Information
Page: One-stop shopping for TEMPEST information.
Soft Tempest: Hidden Data Transmission Using
Electromagnetic Emanations. It is well known that eavesdroppers can reconstruct video screen
content from radio frequency emanations. The authors discuss techniques that enable the software on a
computer to control the electromagnetic radiation it transmits. This can be used for both attack and defense.
Tempest was the name
of a classified (secret) U.S. government project to study (probably for the purpose of both exploiting and guarding against)
the susceptibility of some computer and telecommunications devices to emit electromagnetic radiation (EMR) in a manner that
can be used to reconstruct intelligible data. Tempest's name is believed to have been a code name used during
development by the U. S. government in the late 1960s, but at a somewhat later stage, it became an acronym for
Telecommunications Electronics Material Protected from Emanating Spurious Transmissions.
The Complete, Unofficial TEMPEST Information Page. The
general principle is that computer monitors and other devices give off electromagnetic radiation. With the right
antenna and receiver, these emanations can be intercepted from a remote location, and then be redisplayed (in the case of a
monitor screen) or recorded and replayed (such as with a printer or keyboard).
Compromising
emanations: eavesdropping risks of computer displays. (8 Megabyte PDF)
The Complete,
Unofficial TEMPEST Information Page
Echelon
This section is about Project Echelon,
[1]
[2]
[3]
[4]
[5]
[6]
[7]
which is a government eavesdropping system along the lines
of Carnivore,
but on a world-wide scale.
What is Echelon? "Only in a 'police
state' is the unrestricted interception of communications permitted by government authorities."
Skype Users Beware: Big
Brother May Be Listening. [Scroll down] Immediately after the bust, the European Commission opened an
investigation. Alain Brun, the head of data protection at the Commission, told reporters, "The suspect [i.e., Clinton
staffer] worked at the U.S. National Security Agency, where he learned of an agreement between Skype and Echelon to enable
a 'spy' mode on all Skype products." What has yet to be explained is: What did Hillary Clinton's staffer need
this information for? And where has this former Clinton staffer gone?
Inside Echelon: During
the 1980s, the NSA developed a "fast data finder" microprocessor that was optimally designed for
this purpose. It was later commercially marketed, with claims that it "the most comprehensive
character-string comparison functions of any text retrieval system in the world". A single
unit could work with "trillions of bytes of textual archive and thousands of online users, or
gigabytes of live data stream per day that are filtered against tens of thousands of complex
interest profiles."
ECHELON: America's Secret Global Surveillance
Network. In the greatest surveillance effort ever established, the US National Security Agency
has created a global spy system, codename ECHELON, which captures and analyzes virtually every phone call, fax,
email and telex message sent anywhere in the world.
Echelon is an
officially unacknowledged U.S.-led global spy network that operates an automated system for the interception and relay of
electronic communications. Monitored transmissions are said to include up to 3 billion communications daily,
including all the telephone calls, e-mail messages, faxes, satellite transmissions, and Internet downloads of both public
and private organizations and citizens worldwide.
Echelon is a term associated with a global
network of computers that automatically search through millions of intercepted messages for pre-programmed keywords or
fax, telex and e-mail addresses. Every word of every message in the frequencies and channels selected at a station
is automatically searched.
Echelon: Someone Is Listening. Every
phone call you make, every email or fax you send may be monitored — and probably is. Surprise! It's our own
government.
ECHELON is a term associated with
a global network of computers that automatically search through millions of intercepted messages for
pre-programmed keywords or fax, telex and e-mail addresses. Every word of every message in the
frequencies and channels selected at a station is automatically searched.
Echelon Exists, and You're
Busted. Don your tinfoil hats, folks, because the hush-hush NSA project ECHELON just had a
little light shined on it.
A Most Unusual Collection Agency.
During the Cold War there were hundreds of secret remote listening posts spread around the globe. From
large stations in the moors of Scotland and mountains of Turkey that were complete with golf ball-like
structures called "radomes" to singly operated stations in the barren wilderness of Saint Lawrence Island
between Alaska and Siberia that had only a few antennae, these stations constituted the ground-based portion
of the United States Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) System or "USSS."
Carnivore, Altivore, Echelon:
In terms of privacy concerns as well as raw technological power, Carnivore looks like a toy compared to Echelon.
Echelon is almost certainly the world's most sophisticated network monitoring system and, if rumors are to be believed,
anyone who feels uncomfortable with the secrecy surrounding Carnivore should feel downright paranoid where Echelon is
concerned.
Somebody's listening. American,
British and Allied intelligence agencies are soon to embark on a massive, billion-dollar
expansion of their global electronic surveillance system. According to information
given recently in secret to the US Congress, the surveillance system will enable the agencies
to monitor and analyse civilian communications into the 21st century. Identified for
the moment as Project P415, the system will be run by the US National Security Agency.
Echelon's Architect: Echelon
now has a big brother. Meet Bruce McIndoe, lead architect for
Echelon II, the 'most productive intelligence program' in history.
The Echelon attack. Internet
activists [in October 1999] tried to overwhelm National Security Agency eavesdroppers by flooding the Echelon
spy system with fabricated messages about terrorist plots and bombs. The idea never posed a real threat
to the NSA, but the electronic protest helped raise awareness of the fact that the government is snooping on
every man, woman and child in the country through this system.
Exposing The Global Surveillance System.
Designed and coordinated by NSA, the ECHELON system is used to intercept ordinary e-mail, fax, telex, and
telephone communications carried over the world's telecommunications networks. Unlike many of the electronic
spy systems developed during the Cold War, ECHELON is designed primarily for non-military targets:
governments, organizations, businesses, and individuals in virtually every country. It potentially affects
every person communicating between (and sometimes within) countries anywhere in the world.
My parents were spies. I
grew up just outside RAF Chicksand (at the time an American base, despite the "RAF"). It's most distinctive
feature was a giant double circle antenna we used to call "The Elephants Cage" which didn't appear on any maps. It
was common local knowledge amongst kids that it was part of a global spy network and if you ever said "bomb" on the phone
it would start taping you. Hence whenever using the phone we used to say "bomb" a lot. Don't ask me where we
got this from, but it looks like it's turned out to be at least partially true.
Echelon: Someone is Listening: A
huge information resource on Echelon.
Somebody's listening: This
network of monitoring stations is able to tap all international and some domestic
communications circuits, and sift out messages which sound interesting.
Echelon Watch: The goal of EchelonWatch is not to
disband legitimate intelligence operations but to insist that they be subject to proper oversight.
Echelon Research Resources: Huge
collection of articles and links.
Echelon — Rights Violation in the Information
Age: Now that the cold war is over, covert agencies around the world are increasingly turning
their SIGINT assets, most notably a vast global electronic spy system known as Echelon, against civilian
targets. It’s enough to give any decent rights-respecting individual nightmares.
Echelon: Big brother
without a cause? Critics accuse the United States' intelligence community and its English-speaking
partners of waging what is in effect a new Cold War. At stake are international contracts worth billions
of dollars, and at the disposal of the spymasters is an intelligence gathering system of immense power.
Report Downplays Echelon Effect.
A global surveillance system known as Echelon does exist and has the ability to eavesdrop on telephone calls, faxes
and e-mail messages, a European Parliament committee has concluded.
Q&A: What you need to know about
Echelon. Civil rights groups who monitor Echelon say it can be used to intercept almost any electronic
communication, be it a phone conversation, mobile phone call, e-mail message, fax transmission, net browsing history,
or satellite transmission. The wildest estimates of its capabilities report that it can sift through up to 90% of
all internet traffic.
Echelon Panel Calls It a
Day: "I think it's very good that the report states clearly that Echelon exists, so the work
we've done is not in vain."
Echelon excesses:
There is a strong belief in intelligence circles that Brian Regan may have been the first spy nabbed by "Echelon," the
highly classified information gathering and dissemination network operated by the U.S. National Security Agency
and its global partners.
They're Listening to Your Calls: Echelon monitors
phones, E-mail, and radio signals.
E-mail users warned over
spy network: Computer users across Europe should encrypt all their e-mails, to avoid being spied
on by a UK-US eavesdropping network, say Euro-MPs.
US spy system under attack: The
Echelon system, originally set up during the Cold War, is known to be capable of intercepting private telephone conversations,
faxes and e-mails worldwide.
Louder Call for Echelon Probe: Fresh
outrage in Japan over alleged U.S. satellite-based spying, coupled with European pressure on the same subject, could
add urgency to calls for Congress to engage in a serious investigation of the so-called Echelon system.
England leads the way
DARPA to begin mysterious 'Project
GANDALF'. The Gandalf program is an advanced technology and development and demonstration
program that is seeking solutions to … radio frequency (RF) geolocation and emitter identification using
specific emitter identification (SEI) for specific signals of interest. The ultimate goal of the Gandalf
program is to enable a set of handheld devices to be utilized to perform RF geolocation and SEI on RF signals
of interest to the Gandalf program. The specific goals and performance objectives associated with RF
geolocation and SEI for the Gandalf system are classified.
Big British Brother:
[The National Post's] editorial board traditionally has argued that, in the post-9/11 age, law-enforcement
and security services should enjoy broad powers to investigate and apprehend terrorists. But even we
are appalled by a British proposal, revealed over the weekend, to monitor the telephone, cellphone, text
message, e-mail and Web surfing activity of every citizen in the U. K. in the name of homeland security.
'Black
box' will store all traffic on Net. Fears were growing today over government plans to store
details of all internet traffic in the UK using new "black box" technology. Home Office officials have
told senior telecommunications figures of proposals to use the Interception Modernisation Programme to retain
raw data of every phonecall, email and internet visit, which would be transferred to a database controlled by
the Government. The information would be used to fight terrorism and serious crime.
Every
phone call, email or website visit 'to be monitored'. The proposals will give police and security services
the power to snoop on every single communication made by the public with the data then likely to be stored in an enormous
national database. The precise content of calls and other communications would not be accessible but even text
messages and visits to social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter would be tracked.
Other related topics
Information Fusion Centers and Privacy. Fusion Centers are
intelligence databases that collect information on ordinary citizens.
Information Sharing and Fusion Centers:
Many State and major urban areas have established information fusion centers to coordinate the gathering,
analysis, and dissemination of law enforcement, homeland security, public-safety, and terrorism information.
As of September 1, 2007, over 66 of these centers are operating or are being established in States and
localities across the country.
Privacy May Be a Victim in Cyberdefense
Plan. A plan to create a new Pentagon cybercommand is raising significant privacy and diplomatic concerns,
as the Obama administration moves ahead on efforts to protect the nation from cyberattack and to prepare for possible
offensive operations against adversaries' computer networks. President Obama has said that the new cyberdefense
strategy he unveiled last month will provide protections for personal privacy and civil liberties. But senior
Pentagon and military officials say that Mr. Obama's assurances may be challenging to guarantee in practice...
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
- Ben Franklin
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