TEMPESTpunks, The theme of TEMPEST/RF/eavesdroping/Faraday cages/Van Eyck Radiation/etc. comes up on this list every month or so, nearly as often as the threads about generating random numbers in hardware. (If you don't know about eavesdropping on computer sessions by monitoring and decoding RF emissions by the computers, keep reading this list and the topic will pop up, as it just has!) Anyway, I found this item interesting. I'm not yet sure we need to become "Faraday-Cage-punks quite yet, but the articles and laws mentioned in this report might be useful for someone. From: mitchell@ncsa.uiuc.edu (myself) Newsgroups: talk.politics.crypto Subject: Re: illegal taps Date: 8 Nov 1993 22:39:54 GMT Distribution: world Reply-To: mitchell@ncsa.uiuc.edu (myself) In article <2bjdvm$6gh@vixen.cso.uiuc.edu>, trh42502@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Dream Weaver) writes: |> I suggest that this be the last post here, as the topic is going well |> out of the groups charter. Please redirect, somewhere else. |> |> This officer was in the same way. He freely admited that he was monitoring |> cellular freqs. My reading of the posting as that he had no idea that this was |> illegal. BAD training, and/or lack of understanding of technology based laws! |> It needs to be emphasized to police that just because something is |> transmitted in the air does not mean they can listen to it! Ordinary |> telephone lines transmit, microwave repeaters for long distance & etc. |> Does anyone know if Tempest or any other non-visual surveillance is |> legal without a warrant? |> There is a file available from NIST discussing TEMPEST tech, and its legal status. It is quite an interesting read. Anonymous ftp to csrc.ncsl.nist.gov file /pub/secpubs/tempest.txt It summarizes the legal status of TEMPEST as follows: The use of TEMPEST is not illegal under the laws of the United States3, or England. Canada has specific laws criminalizing TEMPEST eavesdropping but the laws do more to hinder surveillance countermeasures than to prevent TEMPEST surveillance. In the United States it is illegal for an individual to take effective counter-measures against TEMPEST surveillance. This leads to the conundrum that it is legal for individuals and the government to invade the privacy of others but illegal for individuals to take steps to protect their privacy. <quote.off> The reason for the preventive equipment being illegal is that it is classified. (Shocker!) The eavesdropping is legal due to the fact that the radiation emitted in not considered to be a 'communication', and hence is not covered by ECPA, etc. I am leaving this followup in talk.politics.crypto due to the fact the as crypto gets better, the best way to 'crack' it will be through techniques such as TEMPEST. Even a one-time pad doesn't help if your opponent can read monitor from a half-mile away! Anyway, I highly recommend that everyone interested in this thread get a copy of the file. Curious that it should show up on an NIST server. Looks more like something EFF would be distributing. -David Mitchell |> Tom |> |> ______________________________________________________________________________ |> Tom Hilquist Internet:t-hilquist@uiuc.edu |> Disclamer: I didn't write this! Email for PGP Public Key |> PGP 2.3a Key fingerprint = 20 FF CA 46 1D B8 CD 55 F7 9D 71 B0 BD B7 B3 B5