(BTW, there is little discussion of the commercial espionage aspects of Carnivore. I know that Intel must be thrilled at the prospect that a Carnivore box attached to some node that their traffic flows through will suck up all of _Intel's_ traffic. With luck, it will convince companies like Intel and Microsoft to much more widely deploy crypto for communications which might be intercepted by Carnivores.)
Carnivore is a toy compared to other commercial tools already out there. Look at the products from MuTek for example, their 'black box' technology was done for the CIA.
Probably true. Just take a look at the publically advertised info from AST and other NSA supplies, and Carnivore really is just a toy. The claim that this is just a way to test the legal waters (which NSA is generally protected from) has a lot of merit. If this is really the best the FBI can do, I want my tax dollars back. Ern