The Electronic Privacy Information Center says, "The FBI claims system "filters" data traffic and delivers to investigators only those "packets" that they are lawfully authorized to obtain." It would be a brilliant development if a device could only pick up terrorist data, but the truth of the matter is that innocent people will be monitored without their consent because certain keywords are used in normal conversations that trigger the machine to send the data to the FBI. While this system seems innocent and for the good of the country, the question remains as to what the FBI intends to obtain lawfully within their jurisdiction and what they can do with the data that reaches them. The new freedoms the FBI possesses due to recent legislation, such as the PATRIOT Act of 2001 and the Homeland Security Act of 2002, without a doubt made the new version of Carnivore more comprehensive and invasive. The precedent for allowing such surveillance is from the 1968 Supreme Court ruling which states that "wiretaps, bugs, and line traces are legal if the authorities issued a proper warrant," according to Vince Moore. This precedent suggests that monitoring someone's activity is legal if a warrant is issued, but the new acts initiated by Congress take an unprecedented step by making warrants optional when monitoring individuals. The reasoning behind this is that terrorists use relatively new innovations such as the Internet to communicate so steps must be taken to apprehend them. Such steps include unwarranted surveillance, a blatant contradiction to the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unlawful search and seizure. .
The Homeland Security Act of 2002, fast-tracked through Congress by the Bush administration, is one of the biggest overhauls of the United States government. Moore points out that "the main point of the Homeland Security Act is to create a central database where financial, academic, medical, and online records to be kept.