Why Did The FBI Retire Carnivore?

We posted earlier this week that the FBI has officially dropped Carnivore, its "privacy respecting" eavesdropping program. Now reader Throtex writes "Professor Orin Kerr at the George Washington University Law School, a member of the Volokh Conspiracy discusses why Carnivore came to be in the first place and why it really was terminated (about two years ago). Essentially, the media (as usual) got a bit carried away with a non-story: Carnivore was designed to protect your rights from being invaded while sniffing only suspect data. Carnivore was dropped because, as of two years ago, the available tools met the necessary privacy standards, as Prof. Kerr noted in his article about the PATRIOT Act published at the time."

Comments

surveillance? why bother.

[Oktober Sunset]

If they suspect anyone they can simply kidnap them, take them to afghanistan, torture the infomation out of them, then lock them up indefinatly without trial, no need for any of this 'evidence' or 'investigation' crap.

Re:ECHELON

[schtum]

What does "politically motivated" mean anymore? It's supposed to imply a weak, unsubstantiated allegation, but you admit she had "excellent arguments and ample evidence". If you consider that politically motivated, you've been watching too much FUD News Channel.

Want to buy a bridge?

[twitter]

In the late '90s, the FBI was relying upon commercially available packet sniffers (dubbed Omnivore by the Bureau) for electronic surveillance. They found the products available at the time insufficient for the job ...they didn't allow fine enough filtration to protect privacy ...so the Bureau created their own system called Carnivore. But that was over half a decade ago, and the publically available programs have finally caught up to FBI specs.

You have to be shitting me. Do you really believe the US Government would spend money because it was getting TOO MUCH information?

The truth is, you can probably download a packet sniffer off Sourceforge that's more powerful than the dread Carnivore. And that's probably what the FBI's doing now.

No, the FBI now demands what they want from ISP's who collect and sort all the information for marketing purposes. Thanks to the Patriot ACT they no longer need court orders. It's now easier than ever to get wiretaps and snoop on US Citizens. There ARE more than ever and it's getting worse.

If my Government wants to respect my privacy, they can stop their own and other's snooping. What happened to the principle of an inviolable post? My communications, snail, phone, email and others should be private, damn it. I resent my government spending my money to tap into it and I resent the collection of such information by fools who think it's worth money. Such efforts, like ticket sorting are a waste of everyone's time and money. When it's collected, it's done at your cost and you only pay it only when there's no reasonable alternative to the service you need and the cost can be pushed onto you. That, or you're dealing with the wrong people.