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Carnivore is a name given to a system implemented by the Federal Bureau of Investigation that is analogous to wiretapping except in this case, e-mail and other communications are being tapped instead of telephone conversations. Carnivore was essentially a customizable packet sniffer that could monitor all of a target user's Internet traffic. It is a form of policeware. U.S. government officials will confirm or deny little about the physical or logical workings of Carnivore, but there are some basic facts that are generally agreed upon. Official FBI Seal The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is a Federal criminal investigative and intelligence agency which is the principal investigative arm of the United States Department of Justice (DOJ). ...
Telephone tapping or Wire tapping/ Wiretapping (in US) describes the monitoring of telephone conversations by a third party, often by covert means. ...
Wikipedia does not yet have an article with this exact name. ...
Communication is the process of exchanging information, usually via a common protocol. ...
The telephone or phone (Greek: tele = far away and phone = voice) is a telecommunications device which is used to transmit and receive sound (most commonly voice and speech) across distance. ...
Packet sniffers (also known as network or protocol analyzers or Ethernet sniffers) are computer software (usually) or computer hardware that can intercept and log traffic passing over a digital network or part of a network. ...
Policeware is software designed to police citizens by monitoring discussion and interaction of its citizens. ...
Motto: E pluribus unum (1789 to 1956) (Latin: Out of Many, One) In God We Trust (1956 to present) Anthem: The Star-Spangled Banner Capital Washington, D.C. Largest city New York City Official language(s) None at federal level; English de facto Government • President • Vice President Federal Republic George...
In order to be affected, a computer must be temporarily connected to a computer 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 is not highly advanced — using a standard packet sniffer and some fairly straightforward filtering (such as a Perl script), one could easily duplicate this functionality. Getting the cooperation of the ISPs or the owner of the LAN onto which Carnivore is to be placed can either be voluntary, illegal, or by court order; however, once a system is in place it is allegedly not allowed to simply capture every email that passes through the system — by existing U.S. law, publicly acknowledged USG personnel are required to get a warrant or court order naming specific people or email addresses that may be monitored. When an email passes through that matches the filtering criteria mandated by the warrant, the message is logged along with information on the date, time, origin and destination. This logging is most likely relayed in real time to the FBI but the details are not currently known. All other traffic would presumably be dropped without logging or capture. A computer is a machine designed for manipulating data according to a list of instructions known as a program. ...
An Internet service provider (ISP, also called Internet access provider or IAP) is a business or organization that offers users access to the Internet and related services. ...
A local area network (LAN) is a computer network covering a small local area, like a home, office, or small group of buildings such as a home, office, or college. ...
Programming Republic of Perl logo Perl, also Practical Extraction and Report Language (a backronym, see below), is a programming language released by Larry Wall on December 18, 1987 that borrows features from C, sed, awk, shell scripting (sh), and (to a lesser extent) from many other programming languages. ...
In law, a warrant can mean any authorization. ...
There is much speculation and concern regarding the implementation, usage, and possible abuses of Carnivore. Free speech advocates and others interested in civil rights are concerned over the potential for misuse and infringements on individual's right to privacy. Freedom of speech is the right to freely say what one pleases, as well as the related right to hear what others have stated. ...
Civil rights or positive rights are those legal rights retained by citizens and protected by the government. ...
The right to privacy is a purported human right and an element of various legal traditions which may restrain both government and private party action. ...
Assistant FBI Director Donald Kerr has been quoted as saying:
The Carnivore device works much like commercial "sniffers" and other network diagnostic tools used by ISPs every day, except that it provides the FBI with a unique ability to distinguish between communications which may be lawfully intercepted and those which may not. For example, if a court order provides for the lawful interception of one type of communication (e.g., e-mail), but excludes all other communications (e.g., online shopping) the Carnivore tool can be configured to intercept only those e-mails being transmitted either to or from the named subject. ... [it] is a very specialized network analyzer or "sniffer" which runs as an application program on a normal personal computer under the Microsoft Windows operating system. It works by "sniffing" the proper portions of network packets and copying and storing only those packets which match a finely defined filter set programmed in conformity with the court order. This filter set can be extremely complex, and this provides the FBI with an ability to collect transmissions which comply with pen register court orders, trap & trace court orders, Title III interception orders, etc.... ...It is important to distinguish now what is meant by "sniffing." The problem of discriminating between users' messages on the Internet is a complex one. However, this is exactly what Carnivore does. It does NOT search through the contents of every message and collect those that contain certain key words like "bomb" or "drugs." It selects messages based on criteria expressly set out in the court order, for example, messages transmitted to or from a particular account or to or from a particular user.cryptome.org The software grew from an earlier FBI project called Omnivore. Omnivore began in February 1997, and was then rebranded. After prolonged negative coverage in the press, the FBI changed the name of its system from "Carnivore" to the more benign-sounding "DCS1000." DCS is reported to stand for "Digital Collection System"; the system has the same functions as before. The three separate packages Carnivore, Packeteer and CoolMiner, are referred to as the DragonWare Suite. A screenshot of computer software in action. ...
1997 (MCMXCVII) was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
It has been reported, [1] as of the middle of January 2005, that the FBI has essentially abandoned the use of Carnivore in 2001, in favor of commercially available software. 2001: A Space Odyssey. ...
See also Magic Lantern is a keystroke logging program developed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. ...
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The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIP or RIPA) is a United Kingdom law covering the interception of communications. ...
Antenna 4 (through the wire) in former Echelon intelligence gathering station at Silvermine, Cape Peninsula, South Africa. ...
The Information Awareness Office is a branch of the United States Department of Defenses Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. ...
The Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) is a controversial United States wiretapping law passed in 1994 (Pub. ...
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