It was a little over a year ago that THREAT LEVEL revealed that the FBI was spending $10 million developing a new internet surveillance tool called DCS-3000, to replace its outdated Carnivore system. Now the EFF, which is trying to pry loose some details of the program from the jaws of the government, may have to wait another year, the U.S. District Court in DC ruled Monday.
EFF lawyers sued the FBI in October after the bureau failed to respond to a Freedom of Information Act Request for records on DCS-3000, and another surveillance tool called Red Hook. The Department of Justice responded by asking the court to stay the case for two years, because the FBI turned up 20,000 pages of potentially responsive documents, and has a huge backlog of FOIA requests to grind through. The EFF opposed the delay.
Yesterday judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly gave the feds one year, until May 9th 2008, to review and hand over the releasable sections of the documents to EFF. It's not all bad news though: the court ordered the FBI to turn over documents as they go, every four weeks. It'll be like Christmas at EFF, every month. They should hold DCS-3000 parties with every new batch of documents, serve Redhook beer and Echelon table wine.
