Echelon-like...

[Major Variola (ret)]

Not only is EM correct, but:
* many attacks are possible without worrying about keylength.  Got
Scarfo?
* NIST/NSA picked the lamest AES.  If I told you what "lame" meant, I'd
have to kill you.
* (Lack of) User motivation (related to man-machine issues) is still the
spooks' best friend.  As
well as legacy systems, and inadequately designed total systems.  Got
Redmond?

However, stego and decent opsec and cash and leo buffoonery still let
you coordinate the occasional urban skyline
reconstruction, poking holes in boats, etc.  Got Dead Drops?  Mr.
Hanssen?  Mr Ames?



At 08:09 AM 10/10/02 -0700, Eric Murray wrote:
>On Thu, Oct 10, 2002 at 02:28:26AM -0000, anonimo arancio wrote:
>> The government knows exactly what it's doing. It wants to discourage
the use of encryption by any means necessary, because of sheer numbers.
>> Basically, the more messages that are encypted, the more hardware
(and therefore $$$) will be needed to decrypt them.
>> Therefore, the only way they can stay ahead of the game is to keep
the numbers as low as possible, so they can continue to "outspend" the
problem.
>> This is, from their perspective, a perfectly reasonable approach to
decrypting large numbers of messages, a small fraction of which may
contain "interesting" information.
>>
>> Is the above statement a) wrong, b) obvious c) mentioned previously
on the cypherpunks boards, or d)"hey! We never thought of that"
>
>
>B and C, extensively.
>
>The US Government has pretty much given up on restricting crypto
>exports.  There is just enough of a vestigial restriction there to
>maintain the illusion that the government has a right to control crypto

>exports.  If there was anything more, it would be challenged in court
>and most likely get thrown out.  The government backed off on
>previous challenges (Bernstein, Zimmerman) to avoid that.
>
>Eric