Interesting People mailing list archives
more on FBI plans new Net-tapping push
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Sun, 23 Jul 2006 08:14:41 -0400
Begin forwarded message: From: "A.Lizard" <alizard () ecis com> Date: July 23, 2006 8:08:00 AM EDT To: dave () farber net Subject: Re: more on FBI plans new Net-tapping push At 11:56 AM 7/10/06, you wrote:There's a big problem with attacking strong crypto. Internet e- commerce *depends* on it. If people discover when they make purchases at "secure" websites, that their credit card and other ID info is getting regularly grabbed in transit and decrypted on the fly, e- commerce will come to a sudden end.
While the Bush Administration might be happy to see that kind of collateral damage, their support base within the Wall Street GOP would NOT be pleased.
A.Lizard
From: David Farber <dave () farber net> Subject: more on FBI plans new Net-tapping push Date: Sun, 9 Jul 2006 16:49:10 -0400 Begin forwarded message: From: Phil Karn <karn () ka9q net> Date: July 9, 2006 9:24:17 AM EDT To: dave () farber net Subject: Re: [IP] more on FBI plans new Net-tapping push David Farber wrote: > But there's a piece missing. Crypto controls of course! This is of course possible, and it's a bit surprising that this other shoe has not yet fallen so long after 9/11.But consider that any push to regulate or restrict strong crypto would:1. Draw widespread public attention to the fact that the government cannot break it; 2. Be totally ineffectual since crypto is so widely available from so many places in the world; 3. Go against the strongly stated public positions of many conservative Republicans during the "crypto wars" of the mid 1990s, when, coincidentally, Clinton was in office and pushing the Clipper Chip; 4. Be totally ignored by precisely those people whom the government is supposedly most interested in targeting; and 5. Be mostly irrelevant to what the spooks actually do when they vacuum up electronic communications, namely traffic analysis (who talks to who, when, where and how much) rather than acquiring actual content. Content takes too much effort to analyze (and possibly translate), even when it's in the clear. Traffic analysis can be done automatically on a huge scale, and it can be frighteningly effective. As an aside, I note that not much attention has been paid to the "where" part of communications. Cell phones -- even when they're not in calls -- make excellent physical tracking devices. Not even secure end-to-end encryption can change that. It's inherent in how they work. I have no actual information on this, but based on my knowledge of the technology and ongoing revelations of the government's insatiable appetite for data on non-citizens and citizens alike, I confidently predict that the next big revelation in the ongoing saga of massive government data-mining will involve mobile phone registrations. These are the short "I'm here and ready for a call" data messages that all mobile phones transmit every few minutes whenever they're on and idle. Even without GPS for augmented E911 positioning, registrations tell what cell sector you're in. These sectors can be quite small (a few blocks) in densely populated areas. At the very least, they're certainly sufficient to tell what country and city you're in. --Phil
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