Spying is globally enhancing meme spreading. Support your local agency!
A short rant:
I am not the least bit shocked to read, in the link published here earlier today:
http://www.nytimes.com/techweb/TW_Report_U_S_Uses_Key_Escrow_To_Steal_Secrets.html
that the US has, for some time, been conducting economic espionage against European countries, and that an E.U. report has concluded that pushing for key escrow and international cryptographic controls has been aimed to a large extent, not at preventing "crime", but at espionage against "friendly" countries.
What does shock me, however, is that so many European countries have been completely blind to what has been going on up to this point. Does everyone remember the speculation from some time back that the U.S. had employed ECHELON based espionage to determine the negotiating positions of various Wassenar countries in order to achieve international cryptographic controls? I assume that we can't be the only people who've noted this. Does everyone remember the silly trivia that many European countries got in exchange for their support on cryptographic controls? Things like arms contracts -- the phrase "selling one's birthright for a mess o' pottage" comes to mind.
One wonders, however, if the latest revelations that companies like Thompson S.A. and Airbus have lost contracts because ECHELON was used to spy on them and give information on bids to American competitors will create any change European policy.
If the Europeans know what's good for them, they'll start pushing mass use of crypto instead of fighting it.
Perry
Edinburgh
18 May 1999
These are the links and mirrors currently in operation to get a copy of the STOA report on Comint - Interception Capabilities 2000 (IC2000). It was mentioned on the list about ten days ago.
The report is available from
http://www.gn.apc.org/duncan/stoa_cover.htm
http://www.iptvreports.mcmail.com/stoa_cover.htm
http://www.cyber-rights.org/interception/stoa/stoa_cover.htm
http://anon.efga.org:8080/OtherSites/Interception
The zipped file can be FTPd from http://jya.com/ic2000.zip
Quite a number of reports and recent comments I have had on the report focus on the workfactor reduction attacks. You can go direct to this at
http://www.iptvreports.mcmail.com/ic2kreport.htm#_Toc448565572
In one response, Lotus has claimed that their method of crippling export crypto is much better that Microsoft or Netscape, cos with Lotus you get 64 bit security against non NSA attacks and 40 bits for NSA attacks (because they broadcast 20 of your bits, encoded with NSA's public key). . Whereas with IE and NS, you get 40 bit security against everyone, (because they broadcast 88 of your 1298 bits to everyone).
All those in agreement, vote yes.
Duncan