Carnivore Tagged with New Alias

What's in a name? Apparently a lot—the nation's top cops believe re-christening Carnivore with a harmless new name will change public perception of the e-mail surveillance application.

by ISP-Planet Staff [February 16, 2001]

The Federal Bureau of Investigation's polemic Internet surveillance tool known as Carnivore picked up a new epithet this week.

A FBI spokesperson announced that the Web ward would be redubbed DCS1000, an innocuous moniker as opposed to the flesh-eating predator that the original program earned.

"With upgrades come new names," said Paul Bresson, an FBI spokesman.

Carnivore, or DCS1000, is software program designed for one purpose—keeping tabs on a suspect's e-mail, instant messages and Web surfing activities. The program is unleashed from a furtive black box that is installed on an Internet service provider's network under federal wiretap authority.

Name dropping
Privacy groups have argued that the FBI's e-mail snooping system violates protections against unreasonable search and seizure in the U.S. Constitution's Fourth Amendment.

Former Attorney General Janet Reno ordered an independent review of its inner workings after a stir in Congress. Carnivore redux was supposed to rollout in conjunction with a Department of Justice review prepared for new Attorney General John Ashcroft. But the change was leaked to a trade publication, Government Computer News.

The FBI reckons that had the program not carried such a ferocious name, the program never would have been as controversial as it is today. According to Breeson, renaming Carnivore with an alpha-numeric pseudonym that doesn't represent anything is a much friendlier way to present the application to the public.

Name game
Critics said "hogwash." The FBI is kidding itself if it thinks that a name change would calm fears about a program that is ripe for abuse.

Privacy advocates agree that it's not the name that worries people, it's secrecy invoked by the nation's top cops about the way this system works.

—End