Posted on 04/21/2009 9:39:51 PM PDT by JoeProBono
he FBI has used a secret form of spyware in a series of investigations designed to apprehend extortionists, database-deleting hackers, child molesters and hitmen, according to documents obtained by ZDNet Asia's sister site CNET News.com. One suspect used Microsoft's Hotmail to send bomb and anthrax threats to an undercover government investigator; another demanded a payment of US$10,000 a month to stop cutting cables; a third was an alleged European hitman who was soliciting for business from a Hushmail.com account. CNET News.com obtained the documents--totalling hundreds of pages, although nearly all of them were heavily redacted--this week through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA request to the FBI. The FBI spyware, called Cipav (Computer and Internet Protocol Address Verifier), came to light in July 2007 through court documents that showed how the bureau used it in the case of a teenager who was e-mailing bomb threats to a high school near Olympia, Washington.
If someone truly wants to remain anonymous online, it can be done. Your IP address is the basic key to telling anyone on the outside where your data packets are originating from. If you use a proxy or series of proxies, in the absence of an IP address it is going to be an enormous task to identify you.
The effort expended to determine your identity is directly correlated to the content of the data you are transmitting, simple as that.
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