But rather than a fear that the Japanese government or NTT might use the company to glean business secrets from Verio's corporate customers, the FBI seems more concerned about losing their own access to Verio's system for wire tapping. A combination of hardware and software that connects directly to an ISP'system. Carnivore allows the FBI to filter all communications on a provider's system and target traffic by user name or key word searches without the service provider itself being involved. These assurances of honorable intent would be more comforting if they weren't coming from an agency that happily trotted over hundreds of raw FBI files, many on political adversaries of the Clinton's, to the White House. Tapping the Internet is alive and well.
Government agencies do have a legitimate argument for Internet surveillance.
While it is a dynamic tool of communication and information, it is also a medium for con artists, pedophiles, hackers and other criminals. The FBI does see a difference. Well, perhaps because the contents of e-mail communications may be of a most private and intimate nature or express politically incorrect ideas and should not be open to arbitrary government monitoring. At least one Colorado ISP has taken a pre-emptive stance in favor of the idea of privacy. Colorado based ISP RMI.Net stated in the Wall Street Journal that while they would honor court orders for customer communications, they would refuse a request from the FBI to install Carnivore on their system.