---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 6 Jan 1997 20:14:17 -0800 (PST) From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com> To: fight-censorship@vorlon.mit.edu Subject: Foreign spies snoop the Net, from The Netly News The Netly News http://netlynews.com/ SPY VS. SPY January 6, 1997 By Declan McCullagh (declan@well.com) Move over, James Bond. Take your last bow, Maxwell Smart. Modern spies are jacked into the Net, a recent report from the multiagency National Counterintelligence Center says. It claims the Internet is now the "fastest growing" means for foreign governments and firms to gather information about U.S. businesses. The eight-page quarterly report says that malevolent "foreign entities" are sorting through web sites, pounding on search engines and firing off e-mail queries to U.S. defense contractors in hopes of winnowing out sensitive data. "Use of the Internet offers a variety of advantages to a foreign collector. It is simple, low cost, non-threatening and relatively 'risk free' for the foreign entity attempting to collect classified, proprietary, or sensitive information... We also know foreign intelligence and security services monitor the Internet," says the report, which is distributed to government agencies and contractors. Search engines apparently serve spies well. Want a copy of something you shouldn't be able to get? Perhaps it was left in an unprotected directory; try Altavista. "Foreign intelligence services are known to use computers to conduct rudimentary on-line searches for information, including visits to governments and defense contractors' on-line bulletin boards or web sites on the Internet. Access to Internet advanced search software programs could possibly assist them in meeting their collection requirements," the NACIC briefing paper says. Beware of spam from spies, it warns: "These foreign entities can remain safe within their borders while sending hundreds of pleas and requests for assistance to targeted US companies and their employees." Of course! This is any e-mail spammer's modus operandi: Flood an astronomical number of addresses at an infinitesimal cost. Then hope that at least some recipients will respond with the information you want. This isn't the first time that the Clinton administration has painted economic espionage as a dire threat. Last February, FBI director Louis Freeh warned the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence of the possible harm. He said foreign governments are especially interested in "economic information, especially pre-publication data" including "U.S. tax and monetary policies; foreign aid programs and export credits; technology transfer and munitions control regulations... and proposed legislation affecting the profitability of foreign firms acting in the United States." Note to Freeh: That information already is online. For proposed legislation, try Thomas -- or for munition regulations, the White House web site is a good bet. But forget Freeh's rhetoric. The White House isn't serious about halting the overseas flow of American secrets over the Net. If it were, President Clinton would lift the crypto export embargo. Strong encryption is the most effective way for companies to fend off foreign data-pirates, but current regulations allow U.S. multinational firms to use only the cipher-equivalent of a toy cap gun. Worse yet, last week the Commerce Department moved further in the wrong direction by releasing its new encryption export regulations that continue to keep American businesses at a competitive disadvantage compared to their foreign competitors, which generally are less hampered by crypto export rules. "The new regulations are worse" than the old, says Dave Banisar, a policy analyst at the Electronic Privacy Information Center. Sure, France and Britain spy on us for economic purposes. But we're just as guilty. We snooped on the French -- and got several U.S. "diplomats" kicked out of France two years ago. We peeked at Japanese secrets during automobile trade negotiations -- and got caught then, too. Especially under President Clinton, economic intelligence has become part of the mission of our spy agencies. Yet if we complain about other countries while doing it ourselves, we become hypocrites. Stanley Kober, a research fellow at the Cato Institute, argues in a recent paper that it's "folly" for the U.S. to continue such spying and risk alienating political allies: "The world is still a dangerous place, and it would be folly for the democracies to engage in nasty intramural squabbles. Yet that is the danger that economic espionage against other free societies poses." "Washington ought to consider that it may need the cooperation of Paris (or other Western capitals) to help deal with a mutual security threat" from terrorism, Kober writes. I asked Kober what he thought of the NACIC report. "It strikes me as a normal security reminder," he says. "The specifics are fairly slim. It's not the sort of thing that's sent to everyone. It's sent to their clients, the people who have government contracts. Since the Internet is new, they're telling people to be careful." Indeed, netizens must be careful. It's common sense, really, and defensive driving for the Net. Encrypt that e-mail. Use the anonymizer at least once a day. Let paranoia be your watchword. That e-mail from your mother may come from the KGB. When you're not watching it, your monitor may be watching you. Be afraid, Maxwell Smart. Your shoe phone may be listening back. ###