Documented criminal/terrorist uses of cryptography?

[Declan McCullagh]

I agree. One of two obstacles likely stands in the way of documented
criminal use of stego or crypto:

1. The terrortypes haven't used it yet
2. Revealing it in enough detail to count as "documentation"
   would compromise sources and methods

But that hasn't stopped the leaks and such:

   WorldNetDaily Reports WTC Terrorists Used Encryption
   http://www.wartimeliberty.com/article.pl?sid=01/09/21/2220202&mode=thread

-Declan


On Wed, Oct 10, 2001 at 08:03:18PM -0400, Steve Furlong wrote:
> dmolnar wrote:
> 
> > Does anyone have pointers to documented instances of terrorists or
> > criminals using stego or crypto? As opposed to the speculation recently
> > seen regarding Osama bin Laden.
> 
> I very strongly suspect there's been no documented criminal use of stego
> in the computer age; we'd have heard it trumpeted in the past few weeks.
> 
> Criminal use seems to be pretty rare but not unheard of. The FBI put a
> keyboard bug in Scarfo's computer because he was using PGP and they
> couldn't read his mail or files. I vaguely recall complaints that
> Echelon couldn't evesdrop on some European companies suspected of some
> form of nefarious dealings because they used encryption. Take that with
> a grain of salt, because I can't remember details, can't find a link,
> and may be remembering a hypothetical rather than an actual event. I've
> heard of a few cases where someone was attempting to use crypto
> (PGPDisk, probably) to encrypt the files on his computer, but did it
> wrong and the cops were able to read them. No details here, either;
> sorry. You can also find more criminal use of crypto when you consider
> that mere use of crypto has been criminalized in some places; I assume
> that's not what you were looking for.
> 
> Terrorist use of crypto seems to be purely hypothetical at this point.
> It's probably being used, but no one's documented it that I've come
> across. Same caveat as above; if you expand the definition of terrorist
> to include Jim Bell, then there is certainly terrorist use of
> encryption.
> 
> 
> SRF
> 
> -- 
> Steve Furlong    Computer Condottiere   Have GNU, Will Travel
>   617-670-3793
> 
> "Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly
> while bad people will find a way around the laws." -- Plato