Dave Emery's remarks on government access to keystrokes (proposed by the NYT as an alternative to GAK) points to the probable increase of intrusive devices to counter increasing use of encryption and other privacy and anonymity measures. This topic comes up here now and then, with mentions of a slew of methods to protect privacy of data during transmission or storage. But the possibility of logging the initial creation or manipulation of data is not as often discussed, nor how to tie a person to the data, as now being asked in legal and law enforcement fora to identify, catch, convict and jail computer culprits. That the NYT floated the idea surely means someone is testing public response to an idea that seems to be more intrusive than GAK: the logging of initial data and any manipulation of it, prior to encrypting, and maybe including a means to link the actions to the user. If this is logging (and related retrieval) is done covertly, encryption could thereby become a falsely reassuring cloak of privacy. Dave thinks devices like these are surely in the works, and he can say more about their sponsors, technologies and implementations. One driving force, as he previously noted, is the desire for devices to assure copyright protection, backed by the WIPO treaty, which now being considered for approval. See the House report on it at: http://jya.com/hr105-551.txt (141K) And the EFF and ACLU opposition to it: hr2281-opp.htm Other forces, though, are employers who want to snoop, law enforcement, government, marketers, actually the same groups who dislike privacy protection measures, but often prefer to snoop covertly while loudly proclaiming support for privacy. Thus, the more general question Dave has raised is how widespread is the development and implementation of technolgies for covert surveillance on the Web and in desktop boxes -- happily spreading quietly while attention is focussed on the very encryption which it will circumvent? And what are these devices, or what might they be, what might be countermeasures and who might be working for and against them. SDA must have insights to share. Over to Dave Emery and those more knowledgeable. For those who missed his earlier message we've put it, with a follow-up at: http://jya.com/gaks-de.htm