IP: E-Privacy May Be Up To The Industry

[David Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

> Date: Sat, 25 Sep 1999 04:28:59 +0200 (CEST)
> From: Anonymous <nobody () replay com>
> To: cypherpunks () toad com
> om
>
> E-Privacy May Be Up To The Industry
> By Madeleine Acey, TechWeb
> Sep 23, 1999 (11:14 AM)
> URL: http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB19990923S0013
>
> As the rapid adoption of the Internet scares intelligence agencies 
> into stronger efforts to spy on electronic communications, personal 
> privacy will become a matter of social policy. But, ultimately, it 
> will be down to the IT industry and individual users to find new 
> defenses against intrusion, said public key encryption inventor Whit 
> Diffie on Thursday. Speaking at a free public conference in London 
> on the proposed U.K. Electronic Communications Bill and the pending 
> review of the Interception of Communications Act, Diffie said the 
> Internet was bringing global electronic communications to the 
> masses. Consequently, intelligence services were no longer relying 
> on passive listening techniques -- they were developing active 
> penetration capabilities.
>
> "You reach into the database, you get the information you want, it's 
> much more efficient than listening to gigabits of traffic -- hoping 
> someone will say it," Diffie said.
>
> He said the proliferation of Internet usage in the early years of 
> the next century would also make us all desirable targets for 
> criminals -- but regarding defense from this, he said "governments 
> will not be able to do it for us."
>
> The U.K. government has said it needs extra powers of surveillance 
> -- via the Electronic Communications Bill and the Interception of 
> Communications Act -- to protect the public from criminals on the 
> Net.
>
> "Individuals and industry will play an essential role," Diffie said. 
> "You're going to have to have your own measures built-in. This is 
> not hopeless."
>
> "Anonymity is developing into a big problem for law enforcement," 
> said Ross Anderson, chairman of Cambridge University's Computer 
> Laboratory. "The pre-paid mobile phone is the weapon of choice for 
> everyone from ardent terrorists to drug dealers."
>
> But government control of technology was not the answer to defeating 
> criminals, Anderson said. At the moment, theoretically, every 
> foreign-born student with access to the ion beam workstation his 
> laboratory used for testing smartcards was required to have a 
> personal export license for the machine, he said, as it came under 
> export controls that deemed the workstation to be a potential weapon.
>
> "The solution is to get away from regulating the technology and move 
> to regulations based on functionality," Anderson said. "Then you can 
> easily differentiate between good things and bad things and the 
> legislation is likely to last more than two or three years."
>
> Responding to the Scrambling For Safety 3.5 conference, where 
> lawyers said the proposed Electronic Communications Bill threatened 
> civil liberties, the newly appointed minister of state for 
> e-commerce, Patricia Hewitt, acknowledged that sometimes 
> governments' actions could infringe human rights.
>
> "In some cases, it's only the action of government that's going to 
> protect the rights and freedoms of individuals," Hewitt said.
>
> The U.K. government's public consultation period on the Electronic 
> Communications Bill ends on Oct. 8.