Data Intercept Technology Unit

The Data Intercept Technology Unit (DITU, pronounced DEE-too) is a unit of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) of the United States, which is responsible for intercepting telephone calls and e-mail messages of terrorists and foreign intelligence targets inside the US.

The unit is located at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia, which is also the home of the FBI's training academy. DITU probably falls under the FBI's Operational Technology Division, which is responsible for all technical intelligence collection.

DITU also managed the FBI's Carnivore system, which was set up in the 1990s to collect metadata from internet traffic. By 2005 this system had been replaced by commercial software such as NarusInsight.

Since the NSA set up the PRISM program in 2007, it's DITU that actually picks up the data at the various internet companies, like Facebook, Microsoft, Google and Yahoo, before passing them on to the NSA for further processing, analysing and storing.

External link

• Meet the Spies Doing the NSA's Dirty Work