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Friday, January 21, 2005

Carvivore retirement reports outdated

There have been recent reports on the FBI retiring their surveillance tool Carnivore, which have been irritating Orin Kerr.

"The Associated Press reports that the FBI has retired its "Carnivore" Internet surveillance tool. (It actually happened about two years ago, but no one knew about it until now.) The Carnivore debate was premised on a profound misunderstanding of Internet surveillance practices...

Why did the FBI retire Carnivore? For a reason I explained in an article published two years ago on the Patriot Act (see footnote 247 if you're really interested): in the last few years, the private sector finally caught up with the government. Commercial surveillance tools now have the same privacy-enhancing filter technology that the Carnivore tool has, meaning that the government no longer needs to use Carnivore. Strange, but true."

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