Carnivore :

Im sure many of you have heard of the FBI's Carnivore project.

This was basically a project that sniffed packets that travelled acros the network on which it was installed. The idea behind this project was that it could be used as a form of intelligence gathering for homeland security.

The program would be set to scan all emails passing through an ISPs' server and would check for the existence of key terms or phrases within the email. This information would then be gathered into a large database system where it wold undergo further analysis.

Privacy rights activists and campaigners protested and the project was abandoned in favour of a comercailly available application in January of this year.

The Radical Software Group developed CarnivorePE, a "surveillance tool for data networks".

Using this application, many different artists have created their own Carnivore Clients.

One such example is Police State by Jonah Brucker-Cohen. This client uses Carnivore to sniff packets on the local network, searching them for terms related to domestic US terrorism.



The terms found are parsed and assigned a police code (10-79 - Bomb Threat,1000 - Plane Crash etc.) These codes are then converted into binary and then become movement instructions for a fleet of 20 r/c police cars.

The cars move in sync with each other as the information is gathered straight off of the network. The movement of the cars is paired with recorded audio of police sirens and an officer issuing statements over a radio.

The specific information being gathered is similar to that which the FBI intended to gather with the original incarnation of carnivore. By using that information to then control a fleet of police cars , "the police become puppets of their own surveillance" says Brucker-Cohen.

Although not specifically net.art I felt that this work should be included. It is a brilliant example of how information gathered and used by a government agency such as the FBI can and has been used to create works of art.