Does Carnivore suck up mail from unintended targets?
There is a huge controversy over this issue because the FBI refuses to disclose how Carnivore works (see below). It is technically possible to write a system in a robust manner that won’t capture data from innocent people. However, industry practice has been to take short-cuts in sniffing devices. If the FBI follows industry practice, then there are several cases whereby they may capture unintended data a small percentage of the time. A spokesman from the EFF has made the claim on national TV that it would be impossible for Carnivore to focus on a single person without capturing data from everybody else. The EFF claim was that even experts in AI (Artificial Intelligence) would not be able to build such a system. Like many people, the spokesman was thinking of the program from the wrong perspective. While the content of e-mail messages would be impossible to scan, the “envelopes” of messages are highly “structured” and easy to scan. For example, you own e-mail program clearly shows the
