Old Hat

[Anonymous]

On the morning of Thurs, 26-Nov-98 at 10:17:48 -0800, holist 
unwisely said:

> "This is not too widely publicised", he went on to say, 
> "but all insiders are aware that all e-mail anonymiser 
> services in the U.S. are operated by the FBI."

> Quite a few of the messages to cypherpunks seem to come 
> from anonymous remailers in the US.
> 
> Comments?

Comment? COMMENTS? How about this, FUDSpreaderBreath: Stick
Fischer and his claims up your ass.

This is not too widely publicised <whisper, whisper>, I 
went on to say, but all insiders are aware that this kind 
of FUD is unadulterated ratshit. While there is no doubt
_some_ official presence in the remailer network, the
proposition advanced here is preposterous.

> He went on to say it took them about ten minutes to 
> discover with the help of their American friends which 
> account the mail was originating from.

It would probably take more than ten minutes just to find
the phone number of their FBI contact, much less find him
at his desk and not humping some summer intern, much less 
expect that he would know a remailer from his no doubt 
ultra-tight asshole, much less have him run down the 
pointy-haired manager to give him permission to find and 
communicate with a suitably cleared propellor head, much 
less find that the remailer in question was, indeed, 
operated either by them or by their snaky friends over at 
the NSA, much less check their surreptitious logs for the 
offending traffic, much less find that that traffic indeed 
did not originate from another remailer _not_ under their 
control, etc. etc.

Ten minutes, in bureaucrat time, is about what it takes
to rub two brain cells together to make a realistic 
approximation of a human thought. By this time, action
in the physical universe is still a long, long way off.

This report is likely to be nothing more than a complete
fabrication of the facts, even if the underlying case was
real.

> just before the Berlin wall came down, the two Germanies 
> agreed to provide the FBI with direct access to the 
> backbone of the German telephone network

Except that telephone networks don't have "backbones."
More fantasy. And there was no single "German telephone
network," and probably still isn't.

> it is easier for the FBI to listen to German phonecalls 
> than it is for the German authorities themselves), which, 
> in addition to costing a horrendous amount of money,
> resulted in a bunch of data every day that took them two 
> days to process.

Highly doubtful. First, it's not in the FBI's brief to be
doing large-scale foreign-based surveillance of foreign
telephone systems. Second, there is no reason to believe
that the FBI would have a substantially easier time of 
processing large amounts of resulting data than would 
the Germans. The Germans know how to use computers, too,
and being congenitally statist, they no doubt have more
facilities in place closer to the sources of information
than do U.S. authorities at home or abroad.

This claim also ignores the fact that the FBI have their
hands full right at home and don't have the resources to
be conducting large-scale surveillance of the phone calls
of entire foreign nations. Oh, sure, we see increasing
extraterritorial operation by small numbers of FBI, but
that doesn't equate to monitoring the entire German phone
system(s) or a significant segment thereof and identifying 
some nitwit dialing in to AOL.

Is AOL even _in_ Germany? If so, what is it called, GOL?
Gassholes On Line?

The idea that a state security apparatus would find an AOL
account to be a significant obstacle is laughable.

> So, Fischer said, it would have been hopeless if the 
> fellow had not owed the German tax authority one and 
> a half million Marks - the tax authority busted him 
> (following the lines of their own, independent 
> investigation), took his computer, and he was busted.

So we are to believe that after monitoring the entire German
telephone system to identify who was calling in and using
a particular AOL account, and successfully pegging him,
the Germans were powerless to do anything, and had to 
call down their Tax Zombies to have an excuse to grab
the guy's computer, which presumably then provided them
with the "evidence" against him. Right.

If the German authorities overhear in a bar that you might 
have forbidden literature, they will be there the same night, 
ransacking your home. How is it that with evidence that a 
certain person was the user of an AOL account they had 
identified as the source of extortionary messages, they were 
powerless to break down his door? 

I could admire the FUD spreaders just a teensy bit if they
weren't so completely brain dead. They can't even invent a
plausible FUD scenario.

That the USG is operating one or more remailers is a 
no-brainer. That they are operating _all_ U.S. remailers
is beyond the realm of reality. That the FBI has more than
a casual hand in such things is not likely.

Running remailers would be right up the NSA's, uh, alley,
but maintaining a traffic watch on virtually _all_ 
remailers worldwide would be much more their style. Now 
_there's_ an opportunity for the spooks to have some real 
fun, though it's anything but certain they would be willing
to "share," for a variety of reasons. The capabilities they
have are protected as secrets even more than the information
they gather.

FUDBusterMonger

It Ain't FUD til I SAY it's FUD!