[IP] more on FBI plans new Net-tapping push

[David Farber <dave@farber.net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: "RJR RJRiley.com" <RJR@RJRILEY.com>
Date: July 9, 2006 7:08:20 PM EDT
To: dave@farber.net
Subject: RE: [IP] more on FBI plans new Net-tapping push

For IP if you wish.

It is inevitable that well healed parties will at some point manage to
access information which is collected.  For example, the Bells and  
AT&T are
well known in the inventor community for being willing to go to any  
length
to do in inventors who try to enforce their property rights.  What would
stop the telecom's from using the wiretapping system for their own  
purposes?


Ronald J Riley, President
Professional Inventors Alliance
www.PIAUSA.org
RJR"at"PIAUSA.org
Change "at" to @
RJR Direct # (202) 318-1595


-----Original Message-----
From: David Farber [mailto:dave@farber.net]
Sent: Sunday, July 09, 2006 4:49 PM
To: ip@v2.listbox.com
Subject: [IP] more on FBI plans new Net-tapping push



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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