Felix Stalder on Sun, 23 Jun 2002 16:44:11 +0200 (CEST) |
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Re: <nettime> How We Made Our Own "Carnivore" |
The question that Florian Cramer raises -- whether or not RSC Carnivore is technically innovative or simply repackaging existing functionality -- is valid. I accept his technological knowledge, amply displayed, based on which he claims that, indeed, the project is mainly repackaging. However, the critique also strikes me as overly narrow. The FBI Carnivore is not just a sophisticated packet sniffing program, but it is part of a larger techno-administrational set-up in which the program performs very specific things that no other packet sniffing software does: providing intelligence for secret law enforcement operations. Carnivore only is Carnivore because it's embedded in a framework that allows the US government to act upon intelligence gathered through it. The difference between Carnivore and other sniffers is that Carnivore can get you detained. If you're unlucky these days, indefinitely without a trial. In other words, Carnivore is not just a program, but an integral element of a law enforcement strategy. Any critique of the an art work dealing with FBI's Carnivore must consider how it addresses the various aspects of the entire process of carnivore, ie. the all those things that turn the packet sniffing program to Carnivore. >From: Randall Packer <rpacker@zakros.com> >Subject: Re: <nettime> How We Made Our Own "Carnivore" [....] >In my mind, it is important to keep in mind that the Carnivore >software itself is the focal point of the project. At this early >stage, I think the applications being developed are skimming the >surface of what is possible. The use of network data to generate >real-time visual and musical experiences is clearly in its infancy. Randall Packer points approvingly to what strikes me as the real problem with RSC Carnivore. Despite iclaims to the contrary -- and including "Carnivore" in the title is a strong claim to political relevance -- its objectives are primarily aesthetic. Traffic data is taken to be input for visual displays. Their quality is dertimed by the fact that they were "created by leading net artists around the world," rather than by the fact that they reveal otherwise hidden patterns in the data streams. However, the claim that we now have "our own Carnivore" somehow suggests that we have your own intelligence gathering capacities. It implies that we can somehow turn the tables, that were are not only spied on, but we have the ability to observe back, and to observe in a meaningful way. And with meaningful I mean that the process of observing yields information that allows us to act effectively upon the observed. >From what I have seen, RSA Carnivore offers little in this regard. So, perhaps rather than calling the explanatory essay "How we built our own Carnivore" it seems to have been more accurate to call it "How to visualize data traffic". I admit this is less sexy, but at least it doesn't come dangerously close to false advertising. Felix --------------------++----- Les faits sont faits. http://felix.openflows.org # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net