This sounds hauntingly familiar.
======
From:
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20000713.html
July 13, 2000
...
Routers look at every
packet, determine what type of packet it is, where it is coming from and where
it is
going to, then the router delivers the packet to its intended destination. This
is what
routers do. Adding the Carnivore task is a simple matter of blind copying every
packet
to or from a bad guy to a third address at the J. Edgar Hoover FBI Building in
Washington, DC. It's at most a few lines of code and requires no additional
hardware.
So why the box?
The probable reason is because cops like to be in control. They LIKE boxes, like
delivering them in unmarked cars, like the satisfying click of the RJ-45
connector as it
slides home.
...
....But I have my own theory about Carnivore. From a network
architecture standpoint, the best location for Carnivore is right
after the ISP's router. This puts Carnivore in the path of every
packet entering or leaving the ISP. It's also a major reason why
ISPs might not want to install Carnivore boxes -- it's the network's
point of greatest vulnerability. In this position, Carnivore can
act as a listening and recording device, OR IT CAN ACT AS A SWITCH.
If we ever hear a proposal from the FBI in which it plans to install
Carnivores at all 6000 ISPs in the U.S., we'll be giving the government
the power to do something it can't do right now.
Shut the Internet down.
======
Again, I think the purpose is to filter content in wartime or other
national emergency, real or concocted. A standardized box that a
military training school tech can service fits this theory.
Truth is the first casualty in war.
-- Forrest Bishop Manager, Interworld Productions, LLC Chairman, Institute of Atomic-Scale Engineering http://www.speakeasy.org/~forrestb
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