Things that go bump in the dark!



>Date: Sun, 30 Sep 2001 08:05:21 +1000
>To: link@....au, padvocacy@lists.efa.org.au
>From: Jan Whitaker <jwhit@...>
>
>This in the Age today.  Story started out about satellite phones for bin 
>Laden, but ended with this:
>
>http://theage.com.au/news/world/2001/09/30/FFXYY4VA6SC.html
>
>FBI investigators had been able to locate hundreds of e-mail
>                    communications, sent 30 to 45 days before the attack. 
> The messages,
>                    in both English and Arabic, were sent within the US and
>                    internationally. They had been sent from personal 
> computers or from
>                    public sites such as libraries. According to the FBI, 
> the conspirators
>                    did not use encryption; once found, the e-mails could 
> be openly read.
>
>                    Dr Brian Gladman, formerly responsible for electronic 
> security at the
>                    Ministry of Defence and NATO, believes that the reason 
> the terrorists
>                    didn't use encrypted e-mail is that it would have 
> "stood out like a sore
>                    thumb" to NSA's surveillance network. There is also 
> evidence that the
>                    terrorists used simple open codes to conceal who and 
> what they were
>                    talking about. This low-tech method works. Unless 
> given leads, even
>                    the vast Echelon network run by NSA and GCHQ cannot 
> separate
>                    such messages from innocuous traffic.
>
>                    NSA's problem, says Gladman, is that "the volume of 
> communications
>                    is killing them. They just can't keep up. It's not 
> about encryption".
>
>                    The NSA has been trying to keep up with the Internet 
> by building
>                    huge online storage-systems to sift e-mail. Dr Gladman 
> and other
>                    experts believe that, unless primed by intelligence 
> from traditional
>                    agents, these massive spy libraries are doomed to 
> fail. The problem
>                    with NSA's purely technological approach is that it 
> cannot know what
>                    it is looking for. While computers can search for 
> patterns, the problem
>                    of correlating different pieces of information rises 
> exponentially as ever
>                    more communications are intercepted.
>
>                    The new legal plans may therefore do more harm than good.
>                    According to Cambridge computer security specialist Dr 
> Ian Miller,
>                    bringing back escrow "will damage our security in 
> other ways, and
>                    divert an enormous amount of effort that would far 
> better be spent
>                    elsewhere. It won't inconvenience competent terrorists 
> in the least".
>
>                    Phil Zimmermann, inventor of the PGP encryption 
> system, thinks the
>                    penalty of politicians misunderstanding technology 
> will be more costly.
>                    "If we install blanket surveillance systems, it will 
> mean the terrorists
>                    have won. The terrorists will have cost us our 
> freedom," he says.
>
>Re the satellite phone part of the story.  Couldn't the guy just change to 
>a new phone and stop using the old one since it was not longer secret? duh....
>
>JLWhitaker Associates
>Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
>jwhit@primenet.com  --  http://www.primenet.com/~jwhit/whitentr.htm

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
          |E=MC2   (Integral Energy = Mad Consumers Squared)
Been burnt by your Electricity provider?  Check out Anti Integral
http://anti.integral.inoz.com/            Lodge an online complaint today!
http://integral.sux.com/                  Phone (02) 8825 6119


^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
ISPWatch - http://www.ispwatch.com.au
The News Network for the Australian ISP Industry
[australia.internet.com]