I see you [Investigative Technology]

I have been reading a bit about online investigation. I've researched the FBI Carnivore Program and I've talked to some individuals that are leading the market in investigative technology. I realize that many things that are public record use to only be available and now are easily accessible on the internet. i.e. you can go to your local clerk of court homepage type in your name, or names of your friends and get their driving ticket history etc...

My concern/question is this. I've talked to a local acquaintance that is the active in investigative technology for AT&T and he was briefly telling me about the program that they were finishing. Details: Very high power PC organized to search through net and other resources to search and compile information about individuals including: websites visited, programs used(I guess through some sort of packet analyzing via IP), etc... I tried not to pry for information because he seemed very hesitant to speak on the subject.

Does anyone know about any similar programs or any details?

Wouldn't these types of programs be irrelevant because of how dynamic the web information is?

Do you think IP spoofing and the fact that many people use nicknames and other computers (friends, work, coffee shop) to access the net would cause a lot of problems and mis-information in the program?

I have some private investigation background and it is very apparent that the future of investigation will be purely computer based. With this in mind, I just wanted to see if anyone in the Antionline community has been researching similar things or have details that might be interesting.

The government is tapping consumer data mining companies for information like that according to a recent article. See the thread here: Big Brother Found A Loophole?

I am not aware of any specific projects or programs toward that end, but I wouldn't doubt it. First of all, while a lot of the data may be spoofed, wrong or outdated, a lot of it will be right too. It is better to have too much data than too little.

The trick for them would be to somehow correlate all of the data and weed out erroneous stuff as much as possible. Maybe they could use some sort of matching- if they find mulitple references to a specific web site or email address associated with a user it gets marked as more credible.

Good point with the "other computers" theory. I have several computers both at my house and at my work. Some of these computers belong to other people, and so their information is still who the computer thinks is using it. So now AT&T thinks that all of my friends play the same games I do, because i used their machines to do so.

Another thing to think about: eBay. Very few people do a full system restore when buying used machines (your average user leaves all the same stuff on there from before) So now Echelon or Carnivore or whatever the FBI has now thinks that Joe Schmoe visits the same sites that whoever buys a machine from Joe Schmoe does. <I may not have worded that correctly, but you get the point>

The big thing is, the gov't may track all that stuff, but eventually it's gonna be like the library red flag system. They'll only pay attention to you if you look suspicious. who cares if you bought yourself a new set of pots and pans on ebay, and if you look at sports information all the time when you're online (or whatever you tend to do) as long as you're not trying to plan terrorist or anti-gov actions, they won't pay attention.

Where we REALLY have to worry is in areas where the gov't computer system is compromised. If some 1337 h4x0r breaks into the database with all of my irrelevant information, what does he, as a person, now know about me....

I definetly agree with the whole "Don't do anything bad and you don't have to worry about it" theory. But that has long been a statement that makes many people look the other way. Not until it truly effects someone do they care. Therefore, I will research the topic more through my acquaintance to try and bring the AO community more updates on what, how and why it works. Might be nice to know, makes me feel like my security is being raped and there is nothing to do about it. Thanks for the reply's