DoD Documents and Emails on CMU SEI's Tor Research (Office of the Inspector General)

To Whom It May Concern:

This is a request under the Freedom of Information Act. I hereby request the following records:

All guidelines, presentations, policy statements, legal opinions, memoranda, briefs, training manuals, emails and any other documents held, received, sent or maintained by the Department of Defense's Office of the Inspector General on, about, mentioning, or concerning the Software Engineering Institute's (SEI) research into deanonymizing Tor hidden services and users, from January 2012 to the date of this request.

The SEI is a Federally Funded Research and Development Center (FFRDC) sponsored by the DoD and is based at Carnegie Mellon University, according to the SEI's website, which can be found here: http://www.sei.cmu.edu/about/

In 2014, SEI submitted a research paper to the 21st ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS) on deanonymizing Tor hidden services and users. A media report about that paper can be found here: https://motherboard.vice.com/read/tor-attack-could-unmask-new-hidden-sites-in-under-two-weeks

SEI researchers were also planning to present a lecture on their work at the Black Hat hacking conference in August 2014: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/07/22/legal_wrecking_balls_break_budget_tor_popping_talk/

The SEI researchers also carried out this research 'in-the-wild'--that is, in a real world situation--on computers in the Tor network. This led to the deanonymizing of several Tor hidden services and users: https://motherboard.vice.com/read/carnegie-mellon-university-attacked-tor-was-subpoenaed-by-feds

When I write that I am requesting information on "Software Engineering Institute's (SEI) research into deanonymizing Tor hidden services and users," that includes these three-sides of the same piece of research.

The requested documents will be made available to the general public, and this request is not being made for commercial purposes.

In the event that there are fees, I would be grateful if you would inform me of the total charges in advance of fulfilling my request. I would prefer the request filled electronically, by e-mail attachment if available or CD-ROM if not.

Thank you in advance for your anticipated cooperation in this matter. I look forward to receiving your response to this request within 20 business days, as the statute requires.

Sincerely,

Derek Mitch