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.