LE Risks with No Crypto
Did anyone notice the fun little bit in the story of the bust of the Viper Militia in Arizona? The state employee that BATF sent to infiltrate the group almost "assumed room temperature" because an ally of the Militia working for AT&T pulled his long distance phone records. The infiltrator was questioned rather closely about some of his phone calls to official numbers. He managed to persuade them that he wasn't a Fed. Too bad AT&T doesn't use an encrypted open books system to store is records so that "bad guys" can't abuse those records and put our heroic law enforcement personnel at risk. This is a perfect illustration of the fact that technology puts the government most at risk because it will always be the juiciest target. "Worth the powder to blow it up with." DCF
On Tue, 2 Jul 1996, Duncan Frissell wrote:
Too bad AT&T doesn't use an encrypted open books system to store is records so that "bad guys" can't abuse those records and put our heroic law enforcement personnel at risk.
I keep hearing suggestions like this, but I don't think they'd work. If you needed a digital key to grok phone records, then that digital key would be passed around just as casually as the current passwords. Any organization that large, where 99% of the information is banal and uninteresting 99% of the time, cannot keep secrets. It's unreasonable to expect them to. It doesn't make business sense to promise security, because when they fail to deliver, as they can't, they'll get their ass sued. I recently had a practical joker call up all the magazines to which I was subscribed and change my address to that of the local hospital, where these practical jokers were suggesting they'd like to send me. There is no security against this kind of attack, because it's just not in most people's threat profile. This kind of thing is annoying, but it can't be helped. Adding a reasonable level of security to such an insignificant system would increase the cost of that system by several orders of magnitde. It's just not worth it. In the unicorn of Color's relative absence, it falls on me to stress that you can't trust organizations to protect your privacy. If you need to participate in an insecure system, and everybody does, use cash, and use psedonyms.
This is a perfect illustration of the fact that technology puts the government most at risk because it will always be the juiciest target. "Worth the powder to blow it up with."
This is true. -rich
I will presume for the moment that you actually support this position and this is not a blatant troll. On Tue, 2 Jul 1996, Duncan Frissell wrote:
Did anyone notice the fun little bit in the story of the bust of the Viper Militia in Arizona?
The state employee that BATF sent to infiltrate the group almost "assumed room temperature" because an ally of the Militia working for AT&T pulled his long distance phone records. The infiltrator was questioned rather closely about some of his phone calls to official numbers. He managed to persuade them that he wasn't a Fed.
Too bad AT&T doesn't use an encrypted open books system to store is records so that "bad guys" can't abuse those records and put our heroic law enforcement personnel at risk.
This is a perfect illustration of the fact that technology puts the government most at risk because it will always be the juiciest target. "Worth the powder to blow it up with."
DCF
I disagree completely with the premise that the government will always be the juciest target. If you read Tim May's treatise about terrorism, he makes a point that may never be openly discussed by the press as it makes all too much sense. That point is simply that terrorism begins to blossom against a government when a section of the citizenry percieves that they have been disenfranchised by that government and view no opportunity for legal recourse to change the situation, and are not willing to live under those rules. The fact that AT&T may or may not use encryption on their records is irrelevant. That BATF agent could have been the one to pull records illegally instead. Now where is your point ? A government represented has now abused position and priviledge to persue a purpose - right or wrong. The US government is at risk because of the robber baron mentality of many of the government officials, congressmen, representatives, and of course BIll & Hillary. IMO They have purposefully abused position and priveldge and lined their own pockets to their advantage - leaving many of the citizenry wondering what is really going on. I am not a supporter of the militia movement - however, they do represent a growing segment of the population that feels disenfrachised and view violence against the visible government establishment as a way to make their point. There are others who view the government the same way as the militia, but resort to trying to continue to work within the existing system to make the changes they feel are necessary. In this venue encryption is not only desirable but necessary as those in power are trying to consolidate their position by trying to use information they can glean against those who want to remove them from office or thwart their efforts to enact bad legislation. RIchard Nixon was noted for his use of the IRS against select folks. Now we have BIll Clinton and the 700+ personal files collect for use against "enemies" of the administration. My position is that crypto should be available to all - not just the government or a priviledged few. Any technology man creates can be used for good or evil. That will never change. ...Paul
participants (3)
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Duncan Frissell -
Paul S. Penrod -
Rich Graves