[A.J.Armitage]

I was trying to show that it is a contradiction in philosophy to be OK with some government machines/software reading your specific internet data traffic (as they must do to determine where to correctly route your data packets or to even diagnose technical problems which are unrelated to you or your data), but not OK with other government software/machines reading your internet data traffic (say, with software like Carnivore).

So now you're telling me the purpose of the software doesn't matter. LOL, again.

[Southack]

"So now you're telling me the purpose of the software doesn't matter."

Well, that's too generic of a statement for me to really want to get too far into, but no, the purpose of the software doesn't matter in regards to the question of whether or not the data traffic is in the public domain in the first place.

Either sniffers have a right to view your (and everyone else's) coincidental data packets while they are diagnosing technical problems AND other software on other machines have a similar right to examine data packets OR only the intended reciever of the data has the right to read packets (which would shut down the Internet because reading packets is REQUIRED for routing and technical diagnostics).