Carnivore :: Research Papers

Carnivore No one can speak for all Americans in deciding the trade-offs between equal protection of the laws, privacy, and fearless exercise of democratic freedoms. - Rob Geis Envision a future where every action you make is recorded and reviewed by unknown means — A world where a government spies on its own citizens more frequently than other nations — A government that reads everyone’s email, in order to try to thwart unpreventable actions. Does this sound like a science fiction story? Well it is not; this is a reality according to civil libertarians. Ever since the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) program, named Carnivore, was introduced to the world in 1999, civil libertarians have been up in arms claiming that Carnivore violates civil human rights. This claim and others about Carnivore are shortsighted, because there are misconceptions about Carnivore itself. Carnivore is not a vicious wolf, eating its prey (email) at will; it is a harmless puppy, which can barely open its eyes; I will go into some detail on what Carnivore is, why it causes commotion, and why it is inadequate to do any good. It is the role of any gover nment to protect its interests and its citizens. Carnivore does not live up to its expectations, but if used effectively can capture some criminals. History of biting Carnivore is a third generation on-line protection program. In â€Å"How Carnivore Works† by Jeff Tyson, he states, "While information about the first version has never been disclosed, many believe that it was actually a readily available commercial program called Etherpeek" (Tyson, 2). The second generation, Omnivore, was deployed in 1997. Information about Omnivore has not been public until recently. The third generation, DragonWare Suite, was introduced in 1999 which contains three parts, â€Å"[1] Carnivore - A Windows NT/2000-based system that captures the information. [2] Packeteer - No official information released, but presumably an application for reassembling packet into cohesive messages or Web pages. [3] Coolminer - No official information released, but presumably an application for extrapolating and analyzing data found in the messages† (Tyson, 2). In short, Carnivore is a program within the DragonWare suite that captures email packets from Internet Service Providers (ISP's) in order to prevent criminal actions that are conducted through email. According to Tyson, â€Å"The FBI plans to use Carnivore for specific reasons. Particularly, the agency will request a court order to use Carnivore when a person is suspected of: Terrorism, child pornography/exploitation, espionage, information warfare, or fraud† (Tyson, 5).