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From: Darren Reed <darrenr@reed.wattle.id.au> Message-Id: <199810160852.SAA04406@avalon.reed.wattle.id.au> Date: Fri, 16 Oct 1998 18:52:47 +1000 (EST) Reply-To: aucrypto@suburbia.net To: aucrypto@suburbia.net X-Mailing-List: <aucrypto@suburbia.net> Subject: AUCRYPTO: for distrib. (fwd)

I read this today and thought it might be of general interest. Darren

The public key

The perception of people losing their privacy has hit the mainstream. ABC News began a series on October 5th entitled Privacy Lost.

Operation Echelon, if you haven't heard of it yet you will once mainstream media gets a hold of it. We began reading about this and the more information we found the more we began to think George Orwell worked for the NSA [USA National Security Agency ]. When all the details surface we may find that big brother really does exist and has for some time. The NSA reportedly worked closely with other security agencies to build an interception network. This network is so vast that it can supposedly intercept every electronic communication on the planet. The ramifications of this network existing we think will be far reaching and go a long way to forming online privacy policy in the future.

The NSA was also nice enough to provide us with our next topic as well. It appears that up until a few years ago the NSA had a clandestine agreement with a Swiss cryptography company, Crypto AG. Crypto AG also at one time provided most of the encryption equipment used at the diplomatic level around the world. What's special about this is, the agreement allowed the NSA to embed key-recovery devices inside products sold to other countries. The NSA could read the information transmitted with these products as easily as reading the newspaper. This was an ongoing process until March 1992, when Iranian counterintelligence agents arrested a marketing representative from Crypto AG on suspicion of spying. The battle for privacy continues. ===================END FORWARDED MESSAGE===================

Jean-Francois Avon, B.Sc. Physics, Montreal, Canada DePompadour, Société d'Importation Ltée Limoges fine porcelain and french crystal JFA Technologies, R&D physicists & engineers Instrumentation & control, LabView programming PGP keys: http://bs.mit.edu:8001/pks-toplev.html PGP ID:C58ADD0D:529645E8205A8A5E F87CC86FAEFEF891 PGP ID:5B51964D:152ACCBCD4A481B0 254011193237822C