The extensive use of computers and networks for exchange of information has also had ramifications on the growth and spread of crime through their use. Law enforcement agencies need to keep up with the emerging trends in these areas for crime detection and prevention. Among the several needs of such agencies is the need to monitor, detect and analyze undesirable network traffic. However, the monitoring, detecting, and analysis of this traffic may be against the goal of maintaining privacy of individuals whose network communications are being monitored.

PickPacket is a network monitoring tool that handles the conflicting issues of network monitoring and privacy through its judicious use. PickPacket has four components — "The PickPacket Configuration File Generator" for assisting the user in setting up the parameters for capturing packets, the "PickPacket Packet Filter" for capturing packets, the "PickPacket Post-Processor" for analyzing packets, and the "PickPacket Data Viewer" for showing the captured data to the user. This paper briefly describes PickPacket.