Security Management Strategies for the CIOI am attempting to do a research paper,
and I wanted to know: Given that over two years has passed since the independent
technical review of the program formerly known as Carnivore
that you helped produce, do you know if the FBI has attempted
to implement any of the recommendations in the independent
review? If so, where could I find information related to this
implementation? Thank you very much!
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Michael S. Mimoso, Editorial Director
The short answer is I really don't know if they implemented any of the recommendations or not. To fill in some of the details for the longer answer, read on.
As far as I know, neither the Justice Department (which paid for the independent review) nor the FBI ever contacted IITRI again after the Final Report was submitted. Most, if not all, of the IITRI employees that were involved in the review have left the company since then. I have been employed by ACS Defense since December 2001. Some of the members of the Review Team worked for the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT), which was the parent of IITRI (IIT Research Institute). I do not know if those people are still employed by IIT or not.
IITRI itself no longer exists as a not-for-profit company. In January 2003, it became a for-profit company known as Alion Science and Technology that is totally owned by the employees through an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP). You can find more about this at http://www.alionscience.com.
The FBI changed the name of Carnivore to DCS1000 in early 2001. What is interesting about that is that DCS1000 is a registered trademark of Integrated Systems Development. See http://www.isdwhq.com/onecard/dcs1000.html. The FBI was informed of this apparent trademark violation, but I don't know if they changed the name again or not. I don't know if anyone ever informed ISD about the violation.
As far as I know, there has been no follow-up effort to review the changes
made
to Carnivore/DCS1000, even though continued public review was one of the
recommendations our review team made. My suggestions for organizations to
contact that may have more information would be:
Electronic Privacy Information Center
American Civil Liberties Union
The Privacy Foundation
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This was first published in February 2003