What Is Carnibure?

WHAT IS CARNIBURE?

Carnivore, a controversial program developed by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to give the agency access to the online/e-mail activities of suspected criminals. For many, it is eerily reminiscent of George Orwell's book "1984." Although Carnivore was abandoned by the FBI in favor of commercially available eavesdropping software by January 2005, the programthat once promised to renew the FBI's specific influence in the world of computer-communications monitoring is nonetheless intriguing in its structure and application.

Carnivore is a software surveillance system that tracks personal Internet use. The FBI developed the Carnivore surveillance system to track the Internet use of alleged criminals, as well as anyone coming into contact with someoneunder surveillance. Carnivore analyzes electronic information through local area networks (LAN). The system was a Microsoft Windows workstation, which employed strong filtering components using a complex content model development.

The FBI replaced the Carnivore surveillance system with NarusInsight in 2005. Warrants are required to engage in such surveillance.

Carnivore was an Internetsurveillance system developed for the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) so that they could monitor the electronic transmissions of criminal suspects. Critics, however, charged that Carnivore did not include appropriate safeguards to prevent misuse and might violate the constitutional rights of the individual. The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) reported in early 2005 that the FBIhad replaced Carnivore with other, unspecified surveillance software from commercial sources. Such software usually includes a packet sniffer.
EPIC, a public interest group dedicated to emerging civil liberties issues, was the chief critic of Carnivore and continues to be concerned about violations of privacy rights. The group sued and got the FBI to release background information on the system,although the Bureau refused to turn over Carnivore's source code. A private study conducted by the Illinois Institute of Technology Research Institute, which was commissioned by the U.S. Justice Department, found several shortcomings in Carnivore. For example, the system did not keep track of individual users, so any operator defaulted to "administrator," leaving no audit trail. Also, the systemlacked a feature that would require users to confirm that a court order was granted.
The U.S. Patriot Act of 2001 grants the Justice Department the right to examine routing information, but not message contents, without first establishing probable cause and getting a judge's permission.

Configuration
The Carnivore system was a Microsoft Windows-based workstation with packet-sniffing softwareand a removable 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. Toaccurately match the appropriate subject, an elaborate content model was developed.

Placement
The Carnivore system could be installed on a system either through the cooperation of the system owner, or by use of a court order. Once in place, the system was restricted by U.S. Federal law to only monitor specific persons. Under the current regulations, publicly acknowledged government personnel arerequired 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 was believed to be relayed in real time to the FBI. All other traffic would presumably be dropped...