Carnivore (FBI)

Carnivore, later renamed DCS1000, was a system implemented by the Federal Bureau of Investigation that was designed to monitor email and electronic communications. It used a customizable packet sniffer that can monitor all of a target user's Internet traffic. Carnivore was implemented in October 1997. By 2005 it had been replaced with improved commercial software such as NarusInsight.

Carnivore grew out of an earlier FBI project called "Omnivore", which itself replaced an older surveillance tool migrated from the US Navy by FBI Director of Integrity and Compliance, Patrick W. Kelley, which had a still undisclosed name. In September 1998, the FBI's Data Intercept Technology Unit (DITU) in Quantico, Virginia, launched a project to migrate Omnivore from Sun's Solaris operating system to a Windows NT platform. This was done to facilitate the miniaturization of the system and support a wider range of personal computer (PC) equipment. The migration project was called "Phiple Troenix" and the resulting system was named "Carnivore."

The Carnivore system was a Microsoft Windows-based workstation with packet-sniffing software and a removable Jaz disk drive. This computer must be physically installed at an Internet service provider (ISP) or other location where it can "sniff" traffic on a LAN segment to look for email messages in transit. The technology itself was not highly advanced—it used a standard packet sniffer and straightforward filtering. The critical components of the operation were the filtering criteria. To accurately match the appropriate subject, an elaborate content model was developed. An independent technical review of Carnivore for the Justice Department was prepared in 2000.

Several groups expressed concern regarding the implementation, usage, and possible abuses of Carnivore. In July 2000, the Electronic Frontier Foundation submitted a statement to the Subcommittee on the Constitution of the Committee on the Judiciary in the United States House of Representatives detailing the dangers of such a system. The Electronic Privacy Information Center also made several releases dealing with it.

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