When the FBI Guys Come Knocking...

Tim May tcmay at got.net
Wed Sep 26 10:30:40 PDT 2001


On Wednesday, September 26, 2001, at 10:13 AM, Declan McCullagh wrote:

> On Tue, Sep 25, 2001 at 11:03:03PM -0500, Aimee Farr wrote:
>> It is discouraging to see the disdain in which many of you hold the FBI
>> during a time when we need cooperation and insight from nontraditional
>> sources.
>
> The FBI is responsible for counterterrorism efforts in the U.S. They
> have received billions in this area, one of the most rapidly-growing
> in their budgets. They have failed miserably. It makese sense, as I said
> in a BBC interview last week, not to hold them in "disdain," but not to
> whitewash their failure either.
>
> That said, it's hardly unreasonable for Americans to help the FBI
> (a flight school instructor who recognizes the names of some of his
> former students in the media might well want to phone the FBI). But
> cypherpunks can't be blamed for being critical of the FBI's 
> counterrorist
> efforts so far.
>

Indeed, if I ran a flight school I would probably answer any questions 
the FBI might have, even if I were fairly certain none of the attackers 
had trained at my school. Ditto for a handful of other situations, where 
being helpful to the FBI would be the right thing to do.

But if were just an Arab, or just a Muslim, or just a Cypherpunk, then I 
would certainly not answer any questions whatsoever, especially not when 
a general throttling of civil liberties and a search for scapegoats is 
going on.

(I chortle when I read about stegonography. I posted the first 
description of the LSB method in images and sound files in a 1990 
sci.crypt posting. I later developed the idea further. Now I see bozo 
journalists theorizing that OBL used stego, when in fact there's no 
evidence his agents used computers for more than simple AOL mail. I even 
see Bruce Schneier sagely opining about "dead drops." Do a search on 
"digital dead drops" in my 1994 Cyphernomicon...I explored these options 
for freedom fighters a decade ago.)


--Tim May





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