IP: more on Council of Europe drafts secret "Second Protocol" [grab your pgp while you can djf]

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: gep2 () terabites com
Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2002 22:28:48 -0600
To: farber () cis upenn edu
Subject: Re: IP: Council of Europe drafts secret "Second Protocol" [grab
your pgp while you can djf]

The point is that for the types of messages they need to send,
steganographic 
techniques combined with distributed data storage systems (and there are
*billions* of little obscure places on the Internet to get information)
combine 
in such a way that there is truly *no* feasible way to interpret information
transfers that people *really* wish to keep secret.

In the past, "code books" were impractical because distribution of large
books 
was hugely difficult.  Today, any commercially pressed audio CD (for just
ONE 
example) can be used as a "code book" of 300-600Mb or more worth of
machine-readable one-time pad (and these could be combined into a larger
book if 
desired).  A message could be sent as (for instance) a list of offsets (and
lengths) into the code book (and any commercial audio CD would work, or for
that 
matter even any software distribution disc) to retrieve (say) a stream of
data 
which might assemble into (say) a ZIP file.  Unzip the resulting stream, and
voila, you have whatever message you like.

PGP and other such "classical" encryption approaches are based on the
premise 
that the message intercepted contains basically everything you need to
decode 
it, except for some kind of (relatively small) "key".   In fact, nowadays
that 
simply needn't be true anymore... there are plenty of readily and
universally 
available sources (CDs, the Internet, and more) where crucial pieces of the
information can be concealed in absolutely innocent places.

The truth of the matter is that the encryption war has been lost, that genie
is 
simply out of the bottle.  There is *no* way that it can be shoved back in.
The 
solution is going to have to be found elsewhere, perhaps by these approaches
of 
bugging peoples' computers somehow (even THAT is difficult on say, notebook
computers), or otherwise infiltrating terrorist and criminal organizations.

Gordon Peterson                  http://personal.terabites.com/
Support the Anti-SPAM Amendment!  Join at http://www.cauce.org/
12/19/98: Partisan Republicans scornfully ignore the voters they
"represent".
12/09/00: the date the Republican Party took down democracy in America.




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