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

[David Farber <dave@farber.net>]

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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