LE Risks with No Crypto

Did anyone notice the fun little bit in the story of the bust of the Viper
Militia in Arizona?

The state employee that BATF sent to infiltrate the group almost "assumed
room temperature" because an ally of the Militia working for AT&T pulled his
long distance phone records.  The infiltrator was questioned rather closely
about some of his phone calls to official numbers.  He managed to persuade
them that he wasn't a Fed.

Too bad AT&T doesn't use an encrypted open books system to store is records
so that "bad guys" can't abuse those records and put our heroic law
enforcement personnel at risk.

This is a perfect illustration of the fact that technology puts the
government most at risk because it will always be the juiciest target.
"Worth the powder to blow it up with."

DCF

I will presume for the moment that you actually support this position and 
this is not a blatant troll.

On Tue, 2 Jul 1996, Duncan Frissell wrote:

> Did anyone notice the fun little bit in the story of the bust of the Viper
> Militia in Arizona?
> 
> The state employee that BATF sent to infiltrate the group almost "assumed
> room temperature" because an ally of the Militia working for AT&T pulled his
> long distance phone records.  The infiltrator was questioned rather closely
> about some of his phone calls to official numbers.  He managed to persuade
> them that he wasn't a Fed.
> 
> Too bad AT&T doesn't use an encrypted open books system to store is records
> so that "bad guys" can't abuse those records and put our heroic law
> enforcement personnel at risk.
> 
> This is a perfect illustration of the fact that technology puts the
> government most at risk because it will always be the juiciest target.
> "Worth the powder to blow it up with."
> 
> DCF
> 

I disagree completely with the premise that the government will always be 
the juciest target. If you read Tim May's treatise about terrorism, he 
makes a point that may never be openly discussed by the press as it makes 
all too much sense. That point is simply that terrorism begins to blossom 
against a government when  a section of the citizenry percieves that they 
have been disenfranchised by that government and view no opportunity for 
legal recourse to change the situation, and are not willing to live under 
those rules.

The fact that AT&T may or may not use encryption on their records is 
irrelevant. That BATF agent could have been the one to pull records 
illegally instead. Now where is your point ? A government represented has 
now abused position and priviledge to persue a purpose - right or wrong.

The US government is at risk because of the robber baron mentality of 
many of the government officials, congressmen, representatives, and of 
course BIll & Hillary. IMO They have purposefully abused position and 
priveldge and lined their own pockets to their advantage - leaving many of 
the citizenry wondering what is really going on. I am not a supporter of 
the militia movement - however, they do represent a growing segment of the 
population that feels disenfrachised and view violence against the visible 
government establishment as a way to make their point.

There are others who view the government the same way as the militia, but 
resort to trying to continue to work within the existing system to make 
the changes they feel are necessary. In this venue encryption is not only 
desirable but necessary as those in power are trying to consolidate their 
position by trying to use information they can glean against those who 
want to remove them from office or thwart their efforts to enact bad 
legislation. RIchard Nixon was noted for his use of the IRS against 
select folks. Now we have BIll Clinton and the 700+ personal files 
collect for use against "enemies" of the administration.

My position is that crypto should be available to all - not just the 
government or a priviledged few. Any technology man creates can be used 
for good or evil. That will never change.

...Paul

On Tue, 2 Jul 1996, Duncan Frissell wrote:

> Too bad AT&T doesn't use an encrypted open books system to store is records
> so that "bad guys" can't abuse those records and put our heroic law
> enforcement personnel at risk.

I keep hearing suggestions like this, but I don't think they'd work. If you
needed a digital key to grok phone records, then that digital key would be
passed around just as casually as the current passwords. Any organization
that large, where 99% of the information is banal and uninteresting 99% of
the time, cannot keep secrets. It's unreasonable to expect them to. It
doesn't make business sense to promise security, because when they fail to
deliver, as they can't, they'll get their ass sued.

I recently had a practical joker call up all the magazines to which I was
subscribed and change my address to that of the local hospital, where these
practical jokers were suggesting they'd like to send me. There is no
security against this kind of attack, because it's just not in most people's
threat profile. This kind of thing is annoying, but it can't be helped. 
Adding a reasonable level of security to such an insignificant system would
increase the cost of that system by several orders of magnitde. It's just
not worth it.

In the unicorn of Color's relative absence, it falls on me to stress that
you can't trust organizations to protect your privacy. If you need to
participate in an insecure system, and everybody does, use cash, and use
psedonyms. 

> This is a perfect illustration of the fact that technology puts the
> government most at risk because it will always be the juiciest target.
> "Worth the powder to blow it up with."

This is true.

-rich