From: gardner@convex.com (Steve Gardner)
Newsgroups: alt.drugs
Subject: Re: Big Brother is ALWAYS watching!
Keywords: NSA PGP privacy encryption crypt cipher spook snook rights risks
Date: 31 Jul 92 16:40:40 GMT
Organization: Engineering, CONVEX Computer Corp., Richardson, Tx., USA
X-Disclaimer: This message was written by a user at CONVEX Computer
              Corp. The opinions expressed are those of the user and
              not necessarily those of CONVEX.

In article <9207311404.AA03630@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> bj496%Cleveland.Freenet.Edu@CMUVM.CSV.CMICH.EDU writes:

>|When I heard him say that, it suddenly became clear to me that, whether
>|consciously undertaken with that goal or not, the most important result of
>|the NSA's encryption embargoes has been the future convenience of domestic
>|law enforcement. Thanks to NSA export policies, they will be assured that,
>|as more Americans protect their privacy with encryption, it will be of a
>|sort easily penetrated by authority.
	Frankly, I think it merely gives the "authorities" a false sense
	of security.  After all, it has already been admitted that the
	algorithmic technology is impossible to embargo.I wonder how much 
	the Medellin and Calli cartels are paying math grads these days? ;-)

	The US security apparatus is living in a fools paradise if they
	think they can use methods that didn't even work against communist 
	coprolites in the Kremlin to defeat the entrepreneurs
	of the drug cartels.  The Russians were using PKC systems
	that were supposedly denied them.  How long do you think it
	will take the Medellin and Calli cartels to obtain the technology
	if it becomes a business necessity?

	
>|Nevertheless, the NSA has been willing to cost American business a lot of
>|revenue rather than allow domestic products with strong encryption into the
>|global market.
	The security establishment's clash with commercial interests is a 
	VERY GOOD THING.  America is ruled by money, folks--make no mistake 
	about that.  In a fight between capital	and the "true believer", 
	security-nut, leftovers of the cold war there can be only one winner.  
	As long as the Colonel Flags ("I would tell you my real name
	but then I would have to kill you") of this world had a purpose
	in protecting moneyed interests from communists then they were
	tolerated.  Make no mistake, when they have outlived their 
	usefulness they will be "mysteriously" discredited in the press
	and consigned to the same ash-heap as their Soviet counterparts.
	Count on it.  Buy a bag of pop-corn (if you got a mean streak
	like my momma's child) and sit and watch the show as their
	cold war institutions are slowly dismantled.  Rome wasn't build
	in a day and neither was it destroyed in a day.  Just because it
	isn't happening over night doesn't mean the denouement of the
	cold war won't be any less enjoyable.  La revanche est un plat
	qui se mange froid. 


>|While it's impossible to set a credible figure on what that loss might add
>|up to, it's high. Jim Bidzos, whose RSA Data Security licenses RSA, points
>|to one major Swiss bid in which a hundred million dollar contract for
>|financial computer terminals went to a European vendor after American
>|companies were prohibited by the NSA from exporting a truly secure network.
	How many of these do you think it takes before the stories about
	the NSA in the popular press turn nasty.  As it is this month's
	Spectrum makes the NSA look pretty darned incompetent.  The
	battle for the hearts and minds of the electorate has only
	just begun.  Wait until the stories start to appear in the 
	lay press. Why, the story of the Unix passwd program (and it's 
	wrong-headed embargo) alone could keep Dave Barry in columns for 
	months.  No, I'm sorry but I think the NSA is gonna lose this one.  
	The only question is how fast they back off and thus how much they 
	get to keep after they lose.

>|The list of export software containing intentionally broken encryption is
>|also long. Lotus Notes ships in two versions. Don't count on much
>|protection from the encryption in the export version.  Both Microsoft and
>|Novell have been thwarted in their efforts to include RSA in their
>|international networking software, despite frequent publication of the
>|entire RSA algorithm in technical publications all over the world.
	If I were Microsoft I would structure the package to allow
	user supplied encryption code.  Then, foreign implementations
	of US algorithms could be substituted IN THE FIELD and 
	Colonel Flag could pound sand.  

>|Cited again and again as the real object of the embargoes were Third-World
>|countries. terrorists and... criminals. Criminals, most generally
>|drug-flavored, kept coming up, and nobody seemed terribly concerned that
>|some of their operations might be located in areas supposedly off-limits to
>|NSA scrutiny.
	When NSA scrutiny begins to cost the drug cartels money they will
	invest in smart technical people.  They will get them too.
	The working conditions are better and the pay is way off the
	GS-n scale.  Retired covert operatives have been working for the
	drug boys for years.  It's time the pasty faced guys with the
	PhDs got a chance to soak up some tropical sunshine. ;-)


>|He said, "A threat could develop...terrorism, narcotics, whatever...where
>|the public would be pleased that all electronic traffic was open to
>|decryption. You can't legislate something which forecloses the possibility
>|of meeting that kind of emergency."
	But, as you just admitted, it won't be open to decryption.
	That is why it is a fools paradise that drives the security
	folks.  If encryption is outlawed then only outlaws will have 
	encryption but have it they will. Isn't that clear?  


>|"The Department of Justice," he began, "has a very legitimate worry.  The
>|major weapon against white collar crime has been the court-ordered wiretap.
>|If the criminal elements go to using a high quality cipher, the principal
>|defense against narcotics traffic is gone."  This didn't sound like a guy
>|who, were he still head of NSA, would rebuff FBI attempts to get a little
>|help from his agency.
	This is great!! Remember: high quality ciphers will not be
	kept out of the "wrong hands".  It's just that simple.  The "bad
	guys" will have it.  Looks like the FBI loses the war before the
	first battle is engaged doesn't it?  The drug trade is a far more
	formidable foe than a bunch of coprolites in the Kremlin.
	They are driven by entrepreneurial spirit raised to a high
	art form and they are not just a single group.  Every time
	the spooks take one drug entrepreneur out another will spring 
	up in his/her place.  Each time one falls, the others learn from
	his mistakes.   It is a market with NEW entrepreneurial players 
	at every step of the game.  It's the market, folk--and it works.  
	This is a whole new ball game for the Federales,
	one for which they have already shown themselves to be ill-prepared.
	Don't bet on Efrem Zimbalist and the guys in the grey suits
	if you don't want to lose your stake. ;-)

>|"Well, he said, "you could have a registry of institutions which can
>|legally use ciphers. If you get somebody using one who isn't registered,
>|then you go after him."
	How are you going to determine what is encrypted and what isn't?
	What about slipping encrypted messages in binary files?  I'll bet 
	it can be done in a way so that the encrypted
	message is buried in tables of floating point numbers.
	So you send a few hundred thousand bytes to bury a 200byte
	message, big deal.  How are the feds going to put a lid on
	it?  Are they going to analyze all binary data floating about
	to look from the signature of an encrypted message?  I think
	not.  The concept of "information laundering" comes to mind.
	Institutions that can legally use encryption will, for a
	fee, handle your encrypted data for you.  Don't the control
	freaks ever learn?!?

	But beyond that, I think business will thwart efforts to make
	encryption a crime.  If they don't their competitors could
	read their mail just as easy as the government.


>|You don't have to be a hand-wringing libertarian like me to worry about the
>|domestic consequences of the NSA's encryption embargoes.  They are also, as
>|stated previously, bad for business, unless, of course, the business of
>|America is no longer business but, as sometimes seems the case these days,
>|crime control.
	Bzzt  Wrong.  You can't build an economy on that.  That is 
	becoming quite obvious.  When the economy falters enough,
	crime (physical security) will become less of a concern and 
	economic security more of a concern.  Count on it.
	Look at the press Bush is generating.  He may already be
	finding out the dangers of biting (byting? ;-) ) the hand
	that feeds him.  Business is the business of America.  Always
	will be.  



							smg