Re: OT - Kuwait

Scott Vita wrote:

>
> "stananger" <stananger@********.***> wrote in message
> news:Eewyf.9407$Di.5124@xxxxxxxxxxx
>
>> try this one
>>
>> http://www.austinlinks.com/Crypto/non-tech.html
>
> Looks like another dud.
>
>
> "The Attorney General shall make all arrangements with appropriate
> entities to hold the keys for the key-escrow microcircuits installed in
> communications equipment. In each case, the key holder must agree to
> strict security procedures to prevent unauthorized release of the keys.
> The keys shall be released only to government agencies that have
> established their authority to acquire the content of those communications
> that have been encrypted by devices containing the microcircuits. The
> Attorney General shall review for legal sufficiency the procedures by
> which an agency establishes its authority to acquire the content of such
> communications."
>
>
>
> Scott Vita



Every one but you knows the government has been evesdropping on email &
phone calls for years.

They dont need a warrant, they just do it.

If you dont have anything to hide why worry!!



Feds Want to Control Encryption

Do you worry that Big Brother (a.k.a. the Federal Government) wants to
monitor your phone calls, your e-mail, your computer files, your health and
financial records, and your business -- and even build government databases
containing personal information about you, your activities, your medical
treatment, and your finances? You should.

The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, "The right of the people to be
secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable
searches and seizures, shall not be violated," was written at time when
unreasonable searches and seizures were carried out principally by armed
troops. This language is just as applicable and vital today to protect us
against unreasonable searches carried out by modern mechanisms.

Encryption is the marvelous technology that can enable us to have private
phone conversations and send e-mail messages that are secure from prying
eyes -- just like sealing the envelope of a letter. Encryption is a code
that makes your phone conversations and e-mail sound or look like gibberish
to everyone except those to whom you give the key to decode them.

Encryption can enable American citizens to protect both our Fourth Amendment
rights and our First Amendment right to speak or write in any language,
whether English, Spanish, Greek, or code. Surely, American freedom should
include the right to have private conversations, to send private messages,
and to keep private files -- and we do have that right today.

Encryption is not yet in widespread popular use, but it should be soon.
Telephone users are becoming increasingly annoyed with the fact that nosy
people can easily listen in on our wireless (cellular and cordless phone)
conversations. As more and more people use e-mail for their correspondence,
they realize that sending e-mail without encryption is like mailing a
postcard -- everyone can read it along the way to its destination.

But the Clinton Administration opposes our right of encryption. Vice
President Al Gore, Attorney General Janet Reno, and FBI Director Louis
Freeh, are all demanding the authority to read our encrypted messages. They
believe that, to be sure you are not breaking the law, the Federal
Government should have access to all your private files and messages at any
time and without your knowledge.

That would be tantamount to giving the government the power to steam open
all the letters we send through the mail. That's only done in totalitarian
countries. No free nation has ever tried to snoop on the content of private
messages -- until the Clinton Administration.

When you put messages in code, whether it's an old-fashioned code written on
paper or a newfangled code concocted on a computer, there must be a "key"
to enable you and the recipients of your communications to read them. The
Clinton Administration is demanding access to all encryption keys through a
system called "key recovery" or "key escrow." Under one scheme, all
Americans would be required to deposit the keys to their software files and
communications with a "third party" who would rapidly comply with
government agency requests without telling us. As an alternate, the Clinton
Administration is pressuring industry to make it impossible for Americans
to buy any encryption system that doesn't have key recovery built into it.

Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) says that "encryption is to digital communications
what deadbolt locks are to doors." Giving the FBI access to our encryption
keys would be like giving our door keys to the local police, leaving our
doors unlocked, and relying on the police to catch burglars after they
break and enter.

Everyone will eventually want encryption in the computer age. There are all
kinds of reasons why we will want to encrypt our own computer files and
e-mail and telephone calls, and also want the people with whom we do
business to use strong encryption so that the personal records they have on
us will not fall into unauthorized hands.

Whether you use a computer or not, enormous amounts of your personal
information are already collected and stored "on line" on somebody else's
computer. Doctors and hospitals store and transfer sensitive medical
records. Your bank and credit card companies hold and transfer information
about your finances. Your employer, and the stores where you shop, collect
and transfer information about your income and purchases. The telephone
company has a complete listing of every phone call you make or receive,
including the phone numbers, the time, and how long you talked. The
government requires cell phone companies to track the location of your cell
phone.

The Department of Health and Human Services wants to build a national
computerized registry of everyone's health record and at least half the
states have already built a database of medical records. HHS is also
building the National Directory of New Hires with data forwarded by the
states on every new worker. Of course, the Internal Revenue Service and the
Social Security Administration have computer files on nearly all Americans.

The public schools are starting to participate in a national data collection
system that will collect and transfer private information about all
students, not only their academic records, but also medical, attitudinal,
behavioral, and family information that is none of the schools' business.
The plan is to have these electronic portfolios available to the government
and to the students' future employers.

FBI Director Louis Freeh doesn't like Americans having private
conversations. He told the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and
Transportation on July 25, 1996 that encryption poses a "threat to public
safety." He wants to forbid the use of encryption products unless they are
"socially-responsible," i.e., have "key recovery" built into them so he can
read them. He speaks ominously about what he calls "the looming specter of
encryption" that he can't crack. This is the same Louis Freeh who in 1996
proposed that one percent of the telephone capacity in urban areas be
reserved for wiretaps (that's 10,000 phones in a city of one million). Even
the KGB and the Gestapo didn't reach that level of surveillance.

The FBI argues that it needs "key recovery" power to crack down on drug
lords and terrorists, but the bad guys can buy top-quality encryption from
dozens of other countries. The danger from these criminals should not
require Americans to submit to police-state surveillance of our daily lives
and activities.

The FBI cannot be trusted with the awesome power of key recovery. The FBI
has already betrayed our trust in so many areas, including turning over 900
"raw" personnel files to political operatives at the Clinton White House,
the multiple outrages at Waco and Ruby Ridge, and the abuse of Richard
Jewell, the falsely accused Atlanta security guard.

A neutral panel of the National Research Council was set up to make policy
recommendations about encryption. The panel called on the government to
abandon its efforts to restrict encryption. The panel concluded that
increased use of encryption would enhance our national security, not
diminish it. Thirteen of its 16 members had security clearances with access
to secret information, and they said there are no classified national
security reasons that are relevant to the encryption debate. The Clinton
Administration bases its campaign to control private encryption on the
alleged need to fight crime through wiretapping, but the panel concluded
that the ability of the private sector to transfer confidential financial
and other data over the information highway without interception is far
more important. Strong encryption for individual use is the number-one
privacy issue in the information age.






FBI's Wiretaps To Scan E-Mail Spark Concern

By NEIL KING JR. And TED BRIDIS

WASHINGTON -- The Federal Bureau of Investigation is using a superfast
system called Carnivore to covertly search e-mails for messages from
criminal suspects.

Essentially a personal computer stuffed with specialized software, Carnivore
represents a new twist in the federal government's fight to sustain its
snooping powers in the Internet age. But in employing the system, which can
scan millions of e-mails a second, the FBI has upset privacy advocates and
some in the computer industry. Experts say the system opens a thicket of
unresolved legal issues and privacy concerns.

The FBI developed the Internet wiretapping system at a special agency lab at
Quantico, Va., and dubbed it Carnivore for its ability to get to "the meat"
of what would otherwise be an enormous quantity of data. FBI technicians
unveiled the system to a roomful of astonished industry specialists here
two weeks ago in order to steer efforts to develop standardized ways of
complying with federal wiretaps. Federal investigators say they have used
Carnivore in fewer than 100 criminal cases since its launch early last
year.

Word of the Carnivore system has disturbed many in the Internet industry
because, when deployed, it must be hooked directly into Internet service
providers' computer networks. That would give the government, at least
theoretically, the ability to eavesdrop on all customers' digital
communications, from e-mail to online banking and Web surfing.

The system also troubles some Internet service providers, who are loath to
see outside software plugged into their systems. In many cases, the FBI
keeps the secret Carnivore computer system in a locked cage on the
provider's premises, with agents making daily visits to retrieve the data
captured from the provider's network. But legal challenges to the use to
Carnivore are few, and judges' rulings remain sealed because of the
secretive nature of the investigations.

Internet wiretaps are conducted only under state or federal judicial order,
and occur relatively infrequently. The huge majority of wiretaps continue
to be the traditional telephone variety, though U.S. officials say the use
of Internet eavesdropping is growing as everyone from drug dealers to
potential terrorists begins to conduct business over the Web.

The FBI defends Carnivore as more precise than Internet wiretap methods used
in the past. The bureau says the system allows investigators to tailor an
intercept operation so they can pluck only the digital traffic of one
person from among the stream of millions of other messages. An earlier
version, aptly code-named Omnivore, could suck in as much as to six
gigabytes of data every hour, but in a less discriminating fashion.

Still, critics contend that Carnivore is open to abuse. Mark Rasch, a former
federal computer-crimes prosecutor, said the nature of the surveillance by
Carnivore raises important privacy questions, since it analyzes part of
every snippet of data traffic that flows past, if only to determine whether
to record it for police.

"It's the electronic equivalent of listening to everybody's phone calls to
see if it's the phone call you should be monitoring," Mr. Rasch said. "You
develop a tremendous amount of information."

Others say the technology dramatizes how far the nation's laws are lagging
behind the technological revolution. "This is a clever way to use old
telephone-era statutes to meet new challenges, but clearly there is too
much latitude in the current law," said Stewart Baker, a lawyer
specializing in telecommunications and Internet regulatory matters.

Robert Corn-Revere, of the Hogan & Hartson law firm here, represented an
unidentified Internet service provider in one of the few legal fights
against Carnivore. He said his client worried that the FBI would have
access to all the e-mail traffic on its system, raising dire privacy and
security concerns. A federal magistrate ruled against the company early
this year, leaving it no option but to allow the FBI access to its system.

"This is an area in desperate need of clarification from Congress," said Mr.
Corn-Revere.

"Once the software is applied to the ISP, there's no check on the system,"
said Rep. Bob Barr, R-Ga., who sits on a House judiciary subcommittee for
constitutional affairs. "If there's one word I would use to describe this,
it would be 'frightening.' "

Marcus Thomas, chief of the FBI's Cyber Technology Section at Quantico, said
Carnivore represents the bureau's effort to keep abreast of rapid changes
in Internet communications while still meeting the rigid demands of federal
wiretapping statutes. "This is just a very specialized sniffer," he said.

He also noted that criminal and civil penalties prohibit the bureau from
placing unauthorized wiretaps, and any information gleaned in those types
of criminal cases would be thrown out of court. Typical Internet wiretaps
last around 45 days, after which the FBI removes the equipment. Mr. Thomas
said the bureau usually has as many as 20 Carnivore systems on hand, "just
in case."

FBI experts acknowledge that Carnivore's monitoring can be stymied with
computer data such as e-mail that is scrambled using powerful encryption
technology. Those messages still can be captured, but law officers trying
to read the contents are "at the mercy of how well It was encrypted," Mr.
Thomas said.

Most of the criminal cases where the FBI used Carnivore in the past 18
months focused on what the bureau calls ' infrastructure protection," or
the hunt for hackers though it also was used in counterterrorism and some
drug-trafficking cases.




Liberty vs. Totalitarianism, Clinton-Style

Monitoring by I.D. and Database

Two of the principal mechanisms by which the rulers of 20th century police
states maintained their control over their people were the file and the
internal passport. These governments kept a cumulative file (called the
dangan in Communist China) on every individual's performance and attitudes
from school years through adult employment. Citizens carried an internal
passport or "papers" that had to be presented to the authorities for
permission to travel within the country, to take up residence in another
city, or to apply for a new job.

These two methods of personal surveillance -- efficient watchdogs that
prevented any emergence of freedom -- required an army of bureaucrats
fortified by a Gestapo, a Stasi or a KGB, plus the ability to commandeer an
unlimited supply of paper and file folders. Technology has now made the
task of building personal files on every citizen, and tracking our actions
and movements, just as easy as logging onto the Internet.

Unknown to most Americans, coordinated plans are well underway to give the
Federal Government the power to input personal information on all Americans
onto a government database. The computer will record our school, business,
medical, financial, and personal activities, and track our movements as we
travel about the United States.

These plans were authorized by the so-called conservative Congress and are
eagerly implemented and expanded by the Clinton Administration liberals.
They plan to force all Americans to carry an I.D. card linked to a federal
database, without which we will not be able to drive a car, get a job,
board a plane, enter a hospital emergency room or school, have a bank
account, cash a check, buy a gun, or have access to government benefits
such as Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid.

Putting all that information on a government database means the end of
privacy as we know it. Daily actions we all take for granted will
henceforth be recorded, monitored, tracked, and contingent on showing The
Card.

Legislative authority for these dramatic changes in what we endearingly call
the American way of life was buried in two bills passed by Republicans and
signed by Bill Clinton in 1996: the Illegal Immigration Reform and
Immigrant Responsibility Act, and the Personal Responsibility and Work
Opportunity Reform Act (known as welfare reform).

The illegal immigration law prohibits the use of state driver's licenses
after Oct. 1, 2000 unless they contain Social Security numbers as the
unique numeric identifier "that can be read visually or by electronic
means." (Section 656(b)) The act requires all driver's licenses to conform
to regulations promulgated by the Department of Transportation, which
published its proposed regulations on June 17. (Federal Register, vol. 63,
no. 116, pp. 33219-33225)

The illegal immigration law orders the Attorney General to conduct pilot
programs in at least 5 states where the state driver's license includes a
"machine-readable" Social Security number. (Section 403(c)) The law also
orders the development of a Social Security card that "shall employ
technologies that provide security features, such as magnetic stripes,
holograms, and integrated circuits." (Section 657(a)) A "smart card" with
these technologies can contain a digitized fingerprint, retina scan, voice
print, DNA print, or other biometric identifier, and will leave an
electronic trail every time it is used.

The law orders "consultation" with the American Association of Motor Vehicle
Administrators. AAMVA, a pseudo-private, quasi-government organization, has
long urged using driver's licenses, with Social Security numbers and
digital fingerprinting, as a de facto national I.D. card that would enable
the government to track everyone's movements throughout North America.

The welfare reform law requires that, in order to receive federal welfare
funds, states must collect Social Security numbers from applicants for any
professional license, occupational license, or "commercial driver's
license." (Section 317) The Balanced Budget Act of 1997, in the guise of
making "technical corrections" to welfare reform, deleted the word
"commercial," thereby applying the requirement to all driver's license
applicants, and even added "recreational" (hunting and fishing) licenses.

Another provision of welfare reform requires employers, since Oct. 1, 1997,
to transmit the name, address, and Social Security number of every new
worker to a Directory of New Hires. This is supposed to help track deadbeat
dads, but the information is collected from all new workers (regardless of
whether they are deadbeats or even dads) and maintained for 24 months.

The "instant background check" established by the 1993 Brady Act takes
effect nationwide on Dec. 1. Under this system, prospective handgun buyers
must be screened against a database of convicted criminals. But the new
national I.D. card will make it easy to keep a database of gun buyers, too,
which some states reportedly are doing already. Although the Brady Act
forbids federal agencies from using the instant check system to register
firearms, the FBI says it plans to keep records of prospective handgun
buyers for 18 months.

A few states have already quietly legislated acquiescence in the new federal
requirements, but fingerprinting and smart cards have stirred an uproar in
others. Most Americans have never been fingerprinted and look upon it as
something that happens only to criminal suspects.

The New Jersey Legislature recently abandoned efforts to pass Governor
Christine Whitman's high-tech driver's license called "Access New Jersey."
It was designed to contain a computer chip with 100 electronic keys capable
of storing large amounts of personal data. It would leave an electronic
trail each time the card was used to cash a check, make a purchase, pay a
toll, check out a book, get insurance authorization to see a doctor, or
used for identification, all identified by Social Security number. These
new federal laws effectively overturn the 1974 Privacy Act, which declared
that "It shall be unlawful for any Federal, State or local government
agency to deny to any individual any right, benefit, or privilege provided
by law because of such individual's refusal to disclose his Social Security
account number." On the pretext of catching illegal aliens, welfare cheats,
deadbeat dads, and criminals, these laws will subject law-abiding Americans
to the police-state apparatus of national I.D. cards linked to coordinated
government databases.











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Relevant Pages

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