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. Keywords Surveillance
Alexander R. Galloway