What Is Carnivore?

Thinking you're smart enough to avoid getting caught by the Carnivore surveillance system is a big mistake. Carnivore was developed by the FBI and is used to track personal Internet use—even if you have nothing to hide, it could still be monitoring your every move. The system can analyze electronic information through local area networks (LAN), which means that even if you don't have any suspicious contacts or connections, it may still be tracking your web browsing habits. The Carnivore system is a Microsoft Windows workstation that uses vital filtering components using a complex content model development. Carnivore was designed to match an email with warrant information and then relay that information to the FBI in real-time. Another basic assumption was that the FBI would not receive unnecessary or irrelevant electronic information. Carnivore also recorded basic information such as the date and time of an email or other Internet activity. The Carnivore program, installed in an undisclosed number of ISPs, required no court orders or subpoenas. It collected all data sent over a given ISP's network, including emails and web traffic. The FBI would then filter through this data using a keyword search and other search criteria like an email address or IP address. While Carnivore did not read any emails or other online communications, it collected their header information—including sender and recipient addresses, date and time stamps and subject lines—and then took that information to the FBI for further analysis. It's hard to dream of a world where people are concerned about privacy. After all, how on earth could anyone have any privacy concerns in 2000? But believe it or not, some people then cared about privacy rights. They called themselves "privacy advocates." They established organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Electronic Privacy Information Center. They promoted the idea that people ought to be free to use their computers however they please without worrying about governmental snooping through these organizations. Unfortunately for these advocates, their concerns fell on deaf ears at the time - probably for the best since we would have missed out on many great things like Carnivore!