Abstract
The goal of this paper is to offer, in straight forward terms, some practical insight into distributed data surveillance. I will use the software project Carnivore as a case study. Carnivore is a public domain riff on the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation’s software “Carnivore,” which was developed to perform electronic wiretaps of email. As founder of the Radical Software Group (RSG), and lead developer on the Carnivore project, I will describe the technological, philosophical, and political reasons for launching the project. I will also offer an account of the development cycle of the core engine, identify trends in “client” interface designs, and present a series of design challenges that still remain.
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Alexander R. Galloway is an assistant professor at New York University. He is author of Protocol: How Control Exists After Decentralization (Cambridge, The MIT Press, 2004), and a founding member of the software development group RSG.
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Galloway, A.R. “Carnivore personal edition”: exploring distributed data surveillance. AI & Soc 20, 483–492 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-006-0034-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-006-0034-9