Apache
Systems
Carnivore is a windows server placed in a ISP sits and collects data. Email, chat room, web surfing details, Carnivore can analyze millions of messages per second while it searches for the specific messages that it wants.
The FBI is developing Carnivore to help the agency police cyberspace. Law enforcement officials have expressed increasing concern over how the Internet is used illegally for those who would anonymously distribute child pornography, steal confidential proprietary information or wreak havoc on e-commerce giants by hacking into their systems.
However, in its efforts to fight crime, Carnivore may also be violating U.S. constitutional guarantees of privacy. To find criminal activity online, Carnivore must read countless e-mails sent by law-abiding citizens. This process, argue privacy rights advocates and legislators, directly infringes upon Fourth Amendment rights against "unreasonable search and seizure."
http://www.fbi.gov/hq/lab/carnivore/carnivore.htm Carnivore Home Page
WASHINGTON -- Federal police are reportedly increasing Internet surveillance after Tuesday's deadly attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Just hours after three airplanes smashed into the buildings in what some U.S. legislators have dubbed a second Pearl Harbor, FBI agents began to visit Web-based, e-mail firms and network providers, according to engineers at those companies who spoke on condition of anonymity.
An administrator at one major network service provider said that FBI agents showed up at his workplace on Tuesday "with a couple of Carnivores, requesting permission to place them in our core, along with offers to actually pay for circuits and costs."
The person declined to say for publication what the provider's response was, "but a lot of people" at other firms were quietly going along with the FBI's request. "I know that they are getting a lot of 'OKs' because they made it a point to mention that they would only be covering our core for a few days, while their 'main boxes were being set up at the Tier 1 carriers' -- scary," the engineer said.
The FBI's controversial Carnivore spy system, which has been renamed DCS1000, is a specially configured Windows computer designed to sit on an Internet provider's network and monitor electronic communications. To retrieve the stored data, an agent stops by to pick up a removable hard drive with the information that the Carnivore system was configured to record.
Microsoft's Hotmail service has also been the target of increased federal attention, according to an engineer who works there.
