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 'Echelon Study' Released by European Parliament |
Posted by Hemos on Wednesday February 23, @02:16PMfrom the you're-being-watched dept.
ckolar writes, "Duncan Campbell's report on Echelon has been delivered to the European Parliament's committee for Justice and Home Affairs and is available online. " This is the study that was commisioned by the EU - very interesting reading.
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| sprs (Score:2, Interesting) by meighan (meighan at meighan dot com) on Wednesday February 23, @02:23PM EST (#4) (User Info) |
| interesting. anyone have anymore information on the speech pattern recognition software thought to be used on phone lines? -- |
| [OT] Any good noise recognition SW for Linux? (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 23, @03:00PM EST (#34) |
| Not looking for anything so fancy as speech recognition, but just want to be able to train a Linux box to recognize a few canned phrases, claps (Linux Clapper), whistles, etc. Preferably that reads /dev/audio at a low sample rate continuously (say 8khz) so as not to bog down the machine and performs continuous pattern recognition (of selectable quality) on the samples. I already have the festival speech synthesizer and would like to be able to query my linux box for stats. "Uptime" |
| Re:[OT] Any good noise recognition SW for Linux? (Score:1) by notsoanonymouscoward (mandraker00t@hotmail.com) on Wednesday February 23, @04:46PM EST (#118) (User Info) |
| from one of my past postings: Well lets see... take a peek at kvoicecontrol for KDE, compliments of Daniel Kiecza. Email me if you're interested in this kinda stuff (or want my timitgrab.pl script)... its not my primary address, but I check it from time to time. You`d probably be interested in kvoicecontrol for your particular demands. |
| Re:sprs (Score:2) by karb (karbatfordashpresidentdotcom) on Wednesday February 23, @03:01PM EST (#36) (User Info) |
| When the brits used to have that tower to listen to all the traffic between ireland and england, they didn't have workable speech recognition, but used what I thought was a pretty cool hack. Speech recognition is hard. However, taking a voice print is really really easy. So they (british intel or whoever) would automatically take a voice-print of every call, and tape the calls that matched voice-prints of criminals, or whoever they listened to (I'll give them the benefit of the doubt). |
| Re:sprs (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 23, @04:27PM EST (#103) |
| These guys here are working on some great speech pattern recognition software that is much faster than anything else out there. check them out. |
| I don't get it (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 24, @12:15AM EST (#183) |
| These guys here are working on some great speech pattern recognition software that is much faster than anything else out there. check them out. Was that supposed to be funny? You wasted my time. |
| Re:I don't get it (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 24, @10:18AM EST (#209) |
| That was the point bitch. I know I laughed when I read it. Haha. gunslinger carves another notch on his belt... |
| Echelon Study Reports Mirrored (Score:1) by Eruantalon on Wednesday February 23, @05:17PM EST (#129) (User Info) http://rush.baked.net/~jerbel/ |
| OK, I know www.cryptome.org has these same articles, but I thought I'd mirror them just for the hell of it. DEVELOPMENT OF SURVEILLANCE TECHNOLOGY AND RISK OF ABUSE OF ECONOMIC INFORMATION (An appraisal of technologies of political control) Part 2 of the article above Part 3 of the article above Interception Capabilities 2000, or Part 4 of the article above Also: AN APPRAISAL OF TECHNOLOGIES OF POLITICAL CONTROL , or the working copy of the above article Enjoy reading - there's a lot of it :) Eruantalon The Annals of Middle-earth |
| Goddamn F*** Echelon! (Score:1) by weird007ja (lennybruce@zdnetonebox.com) on Thursday February 24, @12:27AM EST (#184) (User Info) |
| Holy shit! We're being monitored! It scares the shit outta me, and it's a real pain in the ass, I tell you for sure! |
| Re:sprs (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 24, @10:49AM EST (#212) |
| Look at the patents database for the NSA patent that explains how to scan text with a window of a few letters to identify the topic of said text. That will work with phonemes. Use some Hidden-Markov model to generate a sequence of phonemes and feed that into a comparable software. Voila. Speech Topic Identificaion. AC |
| Re:sprs (Score:1) by kashko on Thursday February 24, @01:20PM EST (#218) (User Info) |
| I bookmarked the report this morning. This afternoon it is no loger on line. |
| Re:sprs (Score:1) by BMIComp on Sunday February 27, @10:12PM EST (#224) (User Info) |
| Well, the NSA applied for a patent , for a device... or mechanism, that takes conversations, and basically summarizes the topics of those coversations. Now, the significance of this is that they can basically use highly advanced speech recogition software(are you saying the NSA wouldn't be able to attain/develop such a thing!?!... much more developed than any commercial software) to catalog coversations, use this device that has been patented to summarize the topic of the conversation, and if it has anything to do with bomb, terrorism, or any other keywords, then it would notify the proper authorities. Of course, my whole view on the NSA-Echelon situation is... my life is pretty boring... so if the NSA wants to spy on me and others to prevent terrorism, so be it. Oh, and by the way, the website i found the link for the patent is ACLU's Echelonwatch.... i still think there should be a ACLUWatch though =). What company do you want to steal today? |
| Hmm, it's not there... (Score:1) by DoomHaven (DoomHavenNO@SPAMlicensedtokill.com) on Wednesday February 23, @02:28PM EST (#6) (User Info) |
| I can't seem to access the page, which begs the question: Government cover-up, or /. effect gone awry? *YOU* decide! Just to note: while I *am* in Canada, most of my traffic gets routed through the States by default <SIGH>. Maybe, one day, Canada will have its own link to Europe... |
| Re:Hmm, it's not there... (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 23, @02:51PM EST (#23) |
| We'll see it eventually if it's being silenced. The whack-a-mole machine is just getting warmed up. |
| Re:Hmm, it's not there... (Score:1) by tve (--- t.erven # chello.nl ---) on Wednesday February 23, @02:53PM EST (#28) (User Info) |
| I'm trying to access the site from The Netherlands and it's just *very* slow. I've got the title already: Hearing THE EUROPEAN UNION AND DATA PROTECTION Brussels, 22-23 February 2000 Anyone got more? There was an 'unknown error' when I tried to post this. I'm trying not to get paranoid. Please tell me this happens all the time... What I throw at you is only my mental waste. |
| Re:Hmm, it's not there... (Score:1) by Eruantalon on Wednesday February 23, @03:19PM EST (#54) (User Info) http://rush.baked.net/~jerbel/ |
| That's all I can get as well. I tried the main page, and it stopped with a few non-loaded image links. I clicked on the English tab, and am waiting........and waiting.........and waiting. There was an 'unknown error' when I tried to post this. I'm trying not to get paranoid. Please tell me this happens all the time... Well, I got that once, but while I had lynx & 2 netscape windows trying to access the europarl site, netscape's links decided to stop working. Of course, the sparc5 I'm on could be to blame for that.... Stupid work computers. Eruantalon The Annals of Middle-earth |
| Re:Hmm, it's not there... (Score:1) by DoomHaven (DoomHavenNO@SPAMlicensedtokill.com) on Wednesday February 23, @04:48PM EST (#121) (User Info) |
| Didn't get the Unknown error; maybe you should be paranoid. That's all I get, too: the title and the date. The truth is out...of sytle. |
| Yes, it is (was Re:Hmm, it's not there...) (Score:1) by 0x0000 on Thursday February 24, @08:07AM EST (#200) (User Info) |
| It is incredibly slow! Also, they are using Javascript. The actual document links come up in a JS pop-window (why? I dunno... and why PDF? Obviously, this *is* a conspiracy :) Here they are: http://www.europarl.eu.int/dg4/stoa/en/publi/pdf/98-14-01-1en.pdf http://www.europarl.eu.int/dg4/stoa/en/publi/pdf/98-14-01-2en.pdf http://www.europarl.eu.int/dg4/stoa/en/publi/pdf/98-14-01-3en.pdf http://www.europarl.eu.int/dg4/stoa/en/publi/pdf/98-14-01-4en.pdf http://www.europarl.eu.int/dg4/stoa/en/publi/pdf/981401-5en.pdf The links seem to connect, but am still waiting for a download... ~200b/s with lots of stalling... |
| Re:Yes, it is (was Re:Hmm, it's not there...) (Score:1) by 0x0000 on Thursday February 24, @08:10AM EST (#201) (User Info) |
| Here is the URL of the doc that gets loaded in the JS popup, fwiw: http://www.europarl.eu.int/dg4/stoa/en/publi/pop-up.htm
|
| Elisp Macro: Spook - is there a modern version? (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 24, @09:33AM EST (#207) |
| Remembering waaaayyy back.. We used to use EMACS as a mail program (a funny little CMU app called BatMail.) Anyway, because BatMail ran on Emacs, there were all of these cool Lisp programs that enhanced the value of Emacs and BatMail. My favorite of which was called Spook. Spook would insert a paragraph of "NSA Hot-Words" into your email header before sending the email out. The obvious implication being that all of your quite trivial messages would eventually congest the NSA's computers. Has anyone seen a Spook macro for Outlook or Eudora? Bringing that up to the present times might be fun; now that we know they are indeed listening.... -drew |
| Real-deal PDFs are here... (Score:1) by shub (brad@shub-internet.org) on Wednesday February 23, @08:25PM EST (#173) (User Info) http://www.shub-internet.org/brad/ |
| I have links to the PDFs at the bottom of my page at http://www.shub-internet.org/. Alternatively, go straight to http://www.shub-internet.org/eu/ and download them all for yourselves.
|
| Mirror? (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 23, @02:29PM EST (#7) |
| They have been either slashdotted or silenced. Anyone dare to mirror the report? |
| Re:Mirror? (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 24, @10:21AM EST (#210) |
| Troll???? Stupid moderators. Someone tries to do a service and he gets castrated... idiots. |
| Got pulled off of AP Wire (Score:2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 23, @02:31PM EST (#8) |
| I saw this story briefly on the wire this morning, but it appears to have been pulled. Maybe the MIB phoned the AP and said "We would be so much happier if you would show a little more discretion in running stories of this nature..." |
| Don't Complain Here (Score:5, Informative) by 348 (beeoch22@nospamplease.hotmail.com) on Wednesday February 23, @02:33PM EST (#9) (User Info) |
| Whining and bitching about big brother will achieve nothing. I you are interested in having more of their mission etc. made public, curbed completely or audited, the way to make a little noise and get heard is to write your representative. On the Echelon Watch site, they have an e-mail, letter, and fax engine that all you do is add your name, address etc. and something like this will get mailed. As your constituent, I'm writing to ask for your support for a congressional inquiry into a threat to the privacy and civil liberties of all residents of the United States. I've read several credible reports that suggest that the global electronic communications surveillance system -- frequently known by the code name ECHELON -- presents an extreme threat to my privacy and that of other people around the world. If you want to free hand your correspondence, get your senator or representatives name, address etc, from their wed site, and send the letter. Complaining on forums such as Slashdot, Attrition or HNN will not accomplish anything in bringing this stuff into the light. Whining on Slashdot only increases your Karma. Logic is a systematic method of coming to the wrong conclusion with confidence. |
| Re:Don't Complain Here (Score:3, Insightful) by Kaa (subdimensiondotcom!kaa) on Wednesday February 23, @02:48PM EST (#19) (User Info) |
| Whining and bitching about big brother will achieve nothing. Truth. It's the path of least resistance, however. I you are interested in having more of their mission etc. made public, curbed completely or audited, the way to make a little noise and get heard is to write your representative. I think the key word here is "little". I estimate the chances of governments of the world giving up spying on their own citizens and everybody else to be precisely zero. The cypherpunks way is more to my liking. Encrypt. Encrypt all messages. Tell your friends to encrypt all messages. Laugh at the very expensive hardware collecting a lot of apparently random noise (but keep yourself up to date on the latest crypto techniques). Whining on Slashdot only increases your Karma. But isn't it the goal of existence? Better karma is the ultimate goal of life, isn't it? :-) Karma... must have karma... more... more... MORE!!! Kaa Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots. |
| Re:Don't Complain Here (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 23, @03:05PM EST (#39) |
| If you trully believed what you said about Karma, you would have posted it without the +1... That gets you more, as some people (Sig....Sig.... Sig.... DAMN, can't say it!) have pointed out.... |
| Re:Don't Complain Here (Score:2) by 348 (beeoch22@nospamplease.hotmail.com) on Wednesday February 23, @03:09PM EST (#43) (User Info) |
| I think the key word here is "little". I estimate the chances of governments of the world giving up spying on their own citizens and everybody else to be precisely zero. I don't know. A year ago, they denied its very existence, seems like the walls are coming down somewhat. Spying is one thing, the subset being interception of traffic is quite a bit smaller, and easier to exploit. I think that with the "New Age" of e-business in whatever flavor brings big dollar corporations into the mix now. They will have a huge impact on Echelon. Business is building and supporting the net now and they want their say. Enough pressure in the right places will make a difference in how they operate. The cypherpunks way is more to my liking. Encrypt. Encrypt all messages. Tell your friends to encrypt all messages. Laugh at the very expensive hardware collecting a lot of apparently random noise (but keep yourself up to date on the latest crypto techniques). Logic is a systematic method of coming to the wrong conclusion with confidence. |
| Re:Don't Complain Here (Score:2, Insightful) by Kaa (subdimensiondotcom!kaa) on Wednesday February 23, @03:20PM EST (#55) (User Info) |
| If you really have something to say/write whatever and didn't want to take the chance of anyone else possibly seeing/hearing it, would you really send it over the net, or over some unsecured copper pair? I wouldn't. I would. Two reasons. One: Q: "Where does a wise man hide a fish?" A: "In the ocean". Two: It seems highly unlikely that NSA or (insert your favorite bogeyman here) can break correctly-used publicly available encryption with reasonable key size (e.g. >=2048 bit for public key, or >=128 bits for symmetric). Kaa Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots. |
| Re:Don't Complain Here (Score:1) by Spoing on Wednesday February 23, @04:33PM EST (#109) (User Info) |
One: Q: "Where does a wise man hide a fish?" A: "In the ocean". If your ocean is big enough, that's wise advice...for non-digital devices, and as long as you no longer want the fish. Two: It seems highly unlikely that NSA or (insert your favorite bogeyman here) can break correctly-used publicly available encryption with reasonable key size (e.g. >=2048 bit for public key, or >=128 bits for symmetric). Agreed...for now.... :)
Hold it, nobody said anything about three books. |
| Re:Don't Complain Here (Score:1) by Bad Mojo (mojo@nospam.rps.net) on Wednesday February 23, @03:22PM EST (#57) (User Info) http://www.rps.net/mojo |
| "I think the key word here is "little". I estimate the chances of governments of the world giving up spying on their own citizens and everybody else to be precisely zero." Translation: We can't convince Nazi's to be peaceful, so why try? "The cypherpunks way is more to my liking. Encrypt. Encrypt all messages. Tell your friends to encrypt all messages. Laugh at the very expensive hardware collecting a lot of apparently random noise (but keep yourself up to date on the latest crypto techniques)." Translation: Let's let them have what they want and when the finally get around to banning crypto inside my country, then I'll ... look for another way to have my cake and eat it to. Bad Mojo "If trees could scream, would we be so cavalier about cutting them down? We might, if they screamed all the time, for no good reason." |
| Good karma the goal of life? (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 23, @03:36PM EST (#67) |
| > But isn't it the goal of existence? Better karma is the ultimate goal > of life, isn't it? :-) I think the Jainists believe this, but some might interpret the goals of Buddhism and Taoism (in different ways) as the ceasing or slowing of karma; of bringing peace to the Tao through inaction and lack of desire. ("Doing good", especially having a burning lust to do good, is seen in these contexts as, to use Lao-tze's term, "degredation of the great Way.") Those more schooled in religion will see many holes in this argument, and will now flame me. Bring it on! |
| Re:Good karma the goal of life? (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 23, @04:15PM EST (#96) |
| He He. . Ya know you used "Lack of Desire" and burning lust in the same paragraph. Sounds like my marriage. |
| Re:Don't Complain Here (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 23, @04:08PM EST (#90) |
| Encrypt; and don't accept cookies! :Þ |
| Re:Don't Complain Here (Score:1) by Dirtside (matt@SPAMTASTIC.waggoner.com) on Wednesday February 23, @05:28PM EST (#134) (User Info) http://matt dot waggoner dot com |
| Wouldn't this make you a Kaarma whore? :) --- Dirtside | That's strange, this was a first post when I started writing it. |
| Re:Don't Complain Here (Score:2) by noeld on Wednesday February 23, @02:51PM EST (#24) (User Info) http://rootprompt.org |
| Is it true that those who complain about ECHELON get on special government monitoring lists? ;) I remember when it was cool to have a sig file with NUKE, FUSION etc in it to make big brother read your mail. Now people want privacy. ;) Go figure :) Noel RootPrompt.org -- Nothing but Unix |
| Re:Don't Complain Here (Score:1) by Corydon76 (teknoweenie@hotmail.com) on Wednesday February 23, @03:21PM EST (#56) (User Info) |
| I remember when it was cool to have a sig file with NUKE, FUSION etc in it to make big brother read your mail. Now people want privacy. ;) Go figure :) Figure that the reason that we put such incriminating words in our .sig's was not that we wanted Big Brother to read our mail; it's because we wanted to throw so much crap into the wheels of the big machine that it would become quite useless as a means to filter. It's still done. Remember the attempt to crash Echelon a few months ago? The next thing from Microsoft will be object-oriented assembly. |
| Re:Don't Complain Here (Score:1) by 348 (beeoch22@nospamplease.hotmail.com) on Wednesday February 23, @04:21PM EST (#101) (User Info) |
| Yeah, but in the big picture, it has little or no effect on overloading their systems. Reminds me of the old radio gag of having everyone flush their toilets at the same time to protest high water prices. Not even a measurable impact. Logic is a systematic method of coming to the wrong conclusion with confidence. |
| Superbowl Flush and Echelon Flush (Score:2) by dattaway (dattaway@soho.attaway.org) on Wednesday February 23, @04:46PM EST (#117) (User Info) http://www.rickscafe.net |
| Reminds me of the old radio gag of having everyone flush their toilets at the same time to protest high water prices. Speaking of flooding national systems, a friend of mine worked at a water treatment plant (sewage.) I joked to him about the "Superbowl Flush" effect that I heard about in the late 70's and asked if he could comment on it. The theory went something like when America would all get together on Superbowl Sunday to drink beer and watch the barbaric game of football up until halftime, at which time thier urinary bladders exceeded maximum capacity. The concern was that everyone and thier brother made a dash for the toilet, whizzed, and flushed at the same time, overloading the sewer systems and rivers across the country, possibly causing mass flooding, etc... He stated it was no joke and described the incoming rush of water was real. So, I guess we could all flush our crap at the same time and jam echelon in the same way. Whoooohooooo! |
| Don't JUST complain here (Score:3, Insightful) by drox (drox@hotmail.com) on Wednesday February 23, @02:59PM EST (#31) (User Info) |
| Whining and bitching about big brother will achieve nothing. If that's ALL you do, then that's true. You're preaching to the converted. But if you write (yes, with paper and stamps, because it's so much more effective than email that our benighted representatives seldom even hear about) to your representatives and THEN get onto a public forum like Slashdot and tell others what you did and why, it might get others to follow in your footsteps. But please be polite. These people have to slog through bureaucratic BS all day. You won't win any friends in high places by venting your spleen at them. Just explain logically why this is a Bad Thing. And while you're at it, write to your local newspaper. There you'll be preaching to many who are not yet converted. Spread the word! |
| Re:Don't JUST complain here (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 23, @03:16PM EST (#50) |
| Mod this up! You're right. The senators and congress do not respond well to mail bombs, spam or flames. Take a lesson from the Linux Advocacy Guide (Too lazy to Link) , BE POLITE. This area is embarrassing and sensitive as any they deal with, having to respond is painfull enough, make it easier for them to respond, basically don't be an asshole, state your case clearly, quickly and professionally and the letter will get a response. |
| For you information (Score:1) by clyons (clyons@crasher2.ttgcitn.com) on Wednesday February 23, @03:33PM EST (#64) (User Info) |
| This is sorta off topic, but... I recently used one of those e-mail engines to send correspondance to my two state senators (Sen. Chuck Grassley [R] and Sen. Tom Harkin [D], of Iowa), and *BOTH* sent me a snail mail response. FYI, it was concerning the Know Your Customer Sunset Act. |
| Re:Don't JUST complain here (Score:1) by Wah (Hello!?thewah@uswest.netWhat?!) on Wednesday February 23, @04:07PM EST (#88) (User Info) http://wahcentral.net |
| (yes, with paper and stamps, because it's so much more effective than email that our benighted representatives seldom even hear about) pen and paper are great but a printer and a signature make the same point. Just print an e-mail before you send it, sign it, address it, stamp it, and make a bigger difference. Hmm, now I remember why I liked e-mail so much... -- Is it just me or is everyone smoking crack 24 hours a day? |
| The Truth (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 24, @09:09AM EST (#206) |
| Actually, there is NOTHING you can do that will have any effect. Whine, bitch, moan, write, etc. At most you'll get a few people fired, the system 'restructured' (oh my!), and it will continue as before. The press and people enjoy the illusion that they bring about change, but they do not. You (the people) are not in a position of power. They are. Until you realize that and become fully aware of its depth you're just playing into their hands with your little protests. As for encryption, it annoys them, and there's some they probably can't crack. That's why they enlist Microsoft, IBM, Intel, etc to install backdoors, why they use Van Eck freaking (tempest), etc. Don't lose hope, but don't convince yourself you're free when you're not, as that's a true loss of freedom. |
| Accept that govt won't change. Use crypto for all! (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 23, @03:17PM EST (#51) |
| All remote access is done over SSH. gpg handles individual files. All the important data is hidden inside blowfish encrypted filesystems, drive partitions routed through a loop device with crypto (kernel 2.2.12, with int patch, linux-utils patch, get 'em here) so if feds bust in and rip out all my linux boxen they will be unable to mount most filesystems without the passparagraph (not merely a password, but a whole paragraph with a few key typos, easy to remember for me, impossible to guess or bruteforce) The extra secure filesystems are routed through two or three loop devices each with a different crypto method (blowfish+serpent+idea). Oddly enough, things don't run all that slowly on the 450MHz AMD K6-2. Many failed attempts to crack root or user accounts or other detected cracking attempts will auto umount the crypto filesystems in case they try to 'get the data while its still mounted'. There's also huge files of random data in there too which don't decode to anything. Or files with two file systems inside. One 'fake' one, which I grudgingly give up the password for after cracking under the lights (which contain minor offenses stuff like some warez or banking info), and the real one offset after that. The lesson is that someone is always monitoring you. You can never stop them, or get the to stop, or even know they all stopped even if they did. So use crypto everywhere and then you won't have to worry. After all, feds never deciphered Mitnicks encrypted files, did they? Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they really aren't all out to get you. Note: the above is probably all just made up fiction. |
| Re:Accept that govt won't change. Use crypto for a (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 23, @03:58PM EST (#83) |
| hahahah! He said "impossible" |
| Re:Accept that govt won't change. Use crypto for a (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 23, @04:09PM EST (#92) |
| hahahah! He said "impossible" Fine. How about, unless I live to be several hundred or several thousand years old or more, I won't live to see my crypto cracked by 3rd parties. That's good enough for me. |
| Re:Don't Complain Here (Score:4, Insightful) by G27 Radio on Wednesday February 23, @03:35PM EST (#66) (User Info) http://g27.org |
| Complaining on forums such as Slashdot, Attrition or HNN will not accomplish anything in bringing this stuff into the light. Whining on Slashdot only increases your Karma. Not to disagree with your point about being proactive, but I've noticed a lot of people of people seem to disregard the importance of actually having the discussion. Most of the whining and bitching I read contains at least one element of interest, whether intended by the author or not. Also keep in mind that not everyone that reads HNN, attrition, slashdot, etc, is predisposed to getting involved or reading discussions like this. Even the things that could be considered "preaching to the choir" have some educational value for me. Reading other's thoughts on here reinforces ideas that I may have already had, but never thought to articulate or couldn't articulate as well as they did. Later on I can, and occasionally do, use these arguments effectively in day to day conversation. I'd dare say that I learn more from the bitching and preaching than I do from the original articles. Bitch on brothers! numb This is my pet penguin, Tux. And here is my pet donkey, Bill Gates. --Slashdot Man |
| Re:Don't Complain Here (Score:1) by caesarlinux on Wednesday February 23, @03:46PM EST (#74) (User Info) |
| Amen!! Bitch on! :-) "Don't lead me to temptation... I will find it myself!" |
| Stand up and be counted (Score:0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 23, @03:45PM EST (#73) |
| Bitching to your congressman or senator or president is not gonna do jack shit. We live in a time when politicians are OWNED by corporations and run a corrupt government. Corporations who benefit from Echelon, a corrupt government than benefits from Echelon. Complaining will do nothing. It's time to stand up for ourselves and fight the fascist pigs. Obviously we can not fight them with violence, they have the guns but we have the numbers. And even more important, we have the technological know-how. |
| Re:Stand up and be counted (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 23, @04:06PM EST (#86) |
| Don't forget, they also have the black helicoptors. Oops, there goes my tin-foil hat! Must... go... buy... Catcher... intheRye.... |
| Re:Stand up and be counted (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 23, @04:18PM EST (#99) |
| OK! You lead the way!. . . We'll be right behind you! |
| It's tax time again (Score:1) by shepd (moc.liamtoh@rezulaer) on Wednesday February 23, @04:41PM EST (#112) (User Info) |
| and it seems to be showing... (My email address is reversed...) |
| Writing to your Congress is effective! (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 23, @03:57PM EST (#82) |
| Several years ago when the first in depth documents about ECHELON started circulating (at that time in the security mailing lists and groups) I forwarded a rather lengthy and in depth study done by a fellow who had been running a similar system for a large Wall Street investment firm to Senator Conrad Burns of Montana. I am not living in Montana, but I am from there and knew him to be a fair and reasonable person who was also at the time putting up a good fight against encryption restrictions. I did receive a response from Senator Burns that indicated that he had read it and considered it interesting. I have no idea how far he went with it. The point is that if you are reasonable congress is willing to listen. They may not act, but you can at least put the seed into their head, and get them to at least consider your point of view. Chris Pugrud Alternate link!! http://www.gn.apc.org/duncan/stoa.htm |
| SO WHAT ?!?!?!?! (Score:1) by the31337lc (browne AT marietta.edu) on Wednesday February 23, @06:40PM EST (#154) (User Info) http://marietta.edu/~browne |
| Look, people, who cares if NSA is reading your stupid email? Do they care? Are they gonna do anything about it? I mean, seriously, they can read everything I have, it doesn't matter to them. Nobody ever takes the other viewpoint, that they are actually doing this to PROTECT US. They our not our enemies, they are trying to PROTECT us! They are on YOUR SIDE and they don't CARE about your email. It's not like they are stealing your credit card info or spamming you! |
| Re:SO WHAT ?!?!?!?! (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 24, @05:38AM EST (#191) |
| Thank you. I choose to take care of my own problems. I also choose my friends and masters carefully. |
| PROTECT US??? from what? (Score:1) by bartok on Thursday February 24, @06:15AM EST (#194) (User Info) http://www.citeweb.net/montreal/ |
| PROTECT US??? from what? From ourselves? Is it not a principle in this country that we are innocent until we are proven guilty? And considering the diversity of opinion and political choices in this country, what exactly does "on OUR SIDE" mean? Who's side? The people's? The government's? Big buisiness? Democrats? Republicans? Socialists? Anarchists? |
| Re:SO WHAT ?!?!?!?! (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 24, @11:34AM EST (#214) |
| ...and they'll always be good and always tuck us in at night and read us happy stories. Q: Who's your daddy? A: the NSA. |
| Slashdot effect. (Score:2) by fingal (alex.fiennes@sStPyArMaNx.cOoTm) on Wednesday February 23, @02:40PM EST (#13) (User Info) |
| Anybody else in Belgium? Anybody know why the network is so fscked up at the moment? Can't even traceroute to the europarl server at present. Its been like this for a bit now. Surely it can't be a slashdot effect on the level to take out complete pipes? (although I can't imagine that /.ers are the only people trying to download it). Does anybody know what format the report is in, what size it is and precisely what time the link went live? I'd like to read it, but I'd also like to get my connection back at some point... |
| Re:Slashdot effect. (Score:1) by um... Lucas (lk@caralis.com) on Wednesday February 23, @03:03PM EST (#37) (User Info) http://www.caralis.com/us/lucas/ |
| My traceroute can make it 16 of the 17 steps i need to get there... It seems the problem is solely with their server (?). With things like this, since it's a government site that in no way needs advertisers or anything, ROb and Hemos should without a doubt mirror this stuff PRIOR to posting it... Now the discussion is pure drivel. Mostly trolls, and a few general comments about Echelon, rather than one about what this paper has to say. |
| Re:Slashdot effect. (Score:1) by olddoc on Wednesday February 23, @07:19PM EST (#164) (User Info) |
| Yes! Everytime there is a story that will lead to some server flooding due to the /. effect, the story should be mirrored! Anybody have a spare OC192 they aren't using? |
| Re:Slashdot effect. (Score:1) by shub (brad@shub-internet.org) on Wednesday February 23, @03:04PM EST (#38) (User Info) http://www.shub-internet.org/brad/ |
| Yeah, I'm in Belgium too. So far, it looks like traceroutes die at pool02b-194-7-41-145.uunet.be (194.7.41.145). I'm guessing that their leased line has rolled over and died, or perhaps is so congested that it just can't possibly deal with the traffic. Tracerouting from an account I have in the US (with an ISP that is an Above.Net customer), it looks like packets die at the same place -- pool02b-194-7-41-145.uunet.be (194.7.41.145). I'll see if I can find some information for them at RIPE that might tell me more about who their provider is and perhaps what alternate routes might be. Nope. It looks like Uunet is their only provider in Belgium, and they don't appear to have a backup route that I can find. I wonder if perhaps they might be interested in a backup from the largest residential ISP in the country? ;-) -- Brad Knowles http://daily.daemonnews.org/ -- if you're not reading it daily, you're not up-to-date |
| They havent had that much traffic for years :-) (Score:1) by nikolas (Nikolas.Biasin@ruhr-uni-bochum.de) on Wednesday February 23, @03:28PM EST (#62) (User Info) |
| Poor guys, on their europarl server they´ve probably got a few requests from students every day, but apart from that... And being a EU employee the admin probably went home 18:00 MET :-) What is that eu.int-domain, anyway? I want one of these .int domains for myself... |
| Re:Slashdot effect. (Score:1) by mrfunnypants (fakeaccount69@hotmail.com) on Wednesday February 23, @05:19PM EST (#131) (User Info) |
| Well I finally manage to get there, the problem is this isn't a small little report lots of pdf files small in size but seperated, anyway it took me forever and I still haven't accessed an actually document yet, I just got to the links to the actually report, past the main page. explain this to me real quick: the number of visitors on the site is said to only be 2028 yet they are having this many problems with their servers? Why? anyone have an idea, anyway if I can actually access some of the info I will try to mirror it so you can all read it, yay! "Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance" -Confucius |
| related links (Score:5, Informative) by ATKeiper on Wednesday February 23, @02:46PM EST (#16) (User Info) http://www.tecsoc.org/ |
| Some links relating to the technology related to Echelon can be found in a recent edition of Crypto-Gram. Also, there are several related links on the Personal Security page of the Center for the Study of Technology and Society. Finally, if you want the wire version of the story, click here. Yours, |
| Re:related links (Score:2, Informative) by shub (brad@shub-internet.org) on Wednesday February 23, @03:15PM EST (#48) (User Info) http://www.shub-internet.org/brad/ |
| See also the "Interception Capabilities 2000" report at http://www.cyber-rights.org/interception/stoa/interception_capabilities_2000.htm and http://www.gn.apc.org/duncan/ic2kreport.htm. -- Brad Knowles http://daily.daemonnews.org/ -- if you're not reading it daily, you're not up-to-date |
| Re:related links (Score:1) by shub (brad@shub-internet.org) on Wednesday February 23, @03:39PM EST (#69) (User Info) http://www.shub-internet.org/brad/ |
| The actual "Echelon Study" itself is supposedly at http://www.europarl.eu.int /dg4/stoa/en/publi/default.htm. If I can manage to download a copy of it, I'll try to put a mirror up in the US. And then I'll try to explain the traffic to my ISP. ;-) |
| Re:related links (Score:1) by shub (brad@shub-internet.org) on Wednesday February 23, @04:10PM EST (#94) (User Info) http://www.shub-internet.org/brad/ |
| It would appear that these documents are actually PDFs, when you drill all the way down through the various web pages. I am now in the process of downloading what I believe to be the PDFs for the report in question, and if/when these files are downloaded, I will upload them in other places and let you folks know where they are. -- Brad Knowles http://daily.daemonnews.org/ -- if you're not reading it daily, you're not up-to-date |
| Echelon (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 23, @02:46PM EST (#17) |
| Echelon is just another indication that the constitution has been suspended. Time to go home now. |
| Re:Echelon (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 23, @03:43PM EST (#72) |
| Echelon is just another indication that the constitution has been suspended Would it be more accurate to say that the constitution is constipated? |
| I'll mirror it! (Score:2) by dattaway (dattaway@soho.attaway.org) on Wednesday February 23, @02:47PM EST (#18) (User Info) http://www.rickscafe.net |
| Someone mail the text of the report and I'll mirror it or just post it here. Something. I can't stand the suspense! :O |
| Re:I'll mirror it! (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 23, @02:49PM EST (#20) |
| Someone posted the wire version here |
| Enjoy! (Score:3, Informative) by dattaway (dattaway@soho.attaway.org) on Wednesday February 23, @09:02PM EST (#176) (User Info) http://www.rickscafe.net |
| I hate it when sites go down and disappear. Here is a mirror of one of the reports complete with pretty pictures. |
| Mirror (Score:4, Informative) by brunes69 (nighthawk@n2.com) on Wednesday February 23, @02:50PM EST (#22) (User Info) http://irc.cjb.net |
The linked site appears to be slashdotted. I believe this is a valid mirrorof the report: ht tp://www.cyber-rights.org/interception/stoa/interception_capabilities_2000.htm ---The fool who knows his foolishness is wise at least so far... But a fool who thinks himself wise, he is a fool indeed--- |
| Re:Mirror (Score:3, Informative) by Spoing on Wednesday February 23, @03:08PM EST (#42) (User Info) |
| It's not a mirror of the same thing; from what little I was able to read from the original link, the two aren't even similar.
Hold it, nobody said anything about three books. |
| Re:Mirror (Score:2) by Cato (rdonkin@SPAMLESSbigfoot.com) on Thursday February 24, @09:49AM EST (#208) (User Info) http://www.bigfoot.com/~rdonkin/ |
| The report IS identical, it's just the front page that is different - clicking on the Report link from the front page presented at http://www.echelonwatch.org/ gives you the same report as at this URL. |
| "Echelon Study" next to "Blame Canada" (Score:2, Interesting) by ufojoe on Wednesday February 23, @02:52PM EST (#25) (User Info) |
| Interesting how the "Echelon Study" article is posted next to a "Blame Canada" article. After all the operating principle of Echelon just ahppends to be "Blame Canada" (The UK blames Australia... and so on) Coincidence these articles ended up next to each other... I don't think so. |
| SYJ: "Blame Canada" is satirical. (Score:0, Offtopic) by addison on Wednesday February 23, @03:11PM EST (#45) (User Info) |
| (Surely/Shirley you Jest). "Blame Canada" was a joke about exactly that. Sarcasm detector registered 0 reading your post. Addison |
| Re:SYJ: "Blame Canada" is satirical. (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 23, @03:50PM EST (#79) |
| Dickhead! thank you. |
| Europe is pissed off (Score:5, Interesting) by spaceorb (spaceorb(@)hushmail.com) on Wednesday February 23, @02:53PM EST (#27) (User Info) |
| And it seems that France in particular has a taste for the fantastic. Microsoft is the NSA's largest customer, and IBM was forced into using DOS by the government? France allegedly has its own Echelon, and no doubt that the UK does also. So if they're doing it themselves, why are they so pissed at the US? |
| Re:Europe is pissed off (Score:2, Interesting) by Idrach (matthewatidrachdotspam_notdotcom) on Wednesday February 23, @03:11PM EST (#44) (User Info) |
| Yup, the French have their own version of Echelon but, due to lobbying by the Academie Francaise, it doesn't have an English language translator built in ... On a more serious note, we (the UK) don't need our own Echelon, we're part of yours (like Canada, Australia, and, when they're not complaining about US nuclear powered warships, the Kiwis.) It is called the "Five Power Agreement" and regularly gets an mention in Mr Campbell's articles. Just like the NSA aren't supposed to spy on US citizens, our Intelligence services aren't supposed to spy on us without either a warrant or ministerial permission (with our equivalent of a Congressional committee overseeing the whole thing.) Interestingly, they manage to get around this in a number of ways, but nowhere near as well as when we all had analogue mobile phones and it could just be plucked out of the ether. Please don't either confuse the national governments of European nations with the EU (much as certain people would like them to be the same organisation) or (and this is a much more fundamental error) underestimate the hypocrisy of the modern politician. |
| Re:Europe is pissed off (Score:2, Interesting) by kinkie (kinkie@kame.DOT.usr.DOT.dsi.DOT.unimi.DOT.it) on Wednesday February 23, @05:03PM EST (#125) (User Info) http://kinkie.dhs.org |
| Europe is rightfully pissed off, I might add (yes, I am european, as you might guess). The point you seem to be missing is that the echelon is outside Europe's control, and this pisses me off greatly (well, it just adds to the fact that being spied upon pisses me off a great deal too). Let's put this thing in another perspective: while you probably occasionally check your back lawn to keep it clean and tidy, wouldn't you be pissed if your neighbor pointed some hidden surveillance camera to your lawn without telling you, without asking for your permission, without being accountable, and possibly selling videos of your lifemate sunbathing nude to his friends in the neighborhood? Because this is exactly what echelon does. /kinkie |
| Re:Europe is pissed off (Score:3, Insightful) by Weezul (weasel@havoc.spam.gtf.org) on Wednesday February 23, @05:42PM EST (#141) (User Info) http://havoc.gtf.org/weasel |
| Technically, the reason most European governments are pissed is because the U.S. uses Echelon to steal contracts from French buisnesses. I just hope that they sell it to their common people as "those evil Americans are spying on our you" because then they will have a hard time defending their own programs when they come under attack. It may be to our advantage to take these programs down one at a time so that the people in charge do not think about protecting their own program when they attack someone else's. What we need to do is make it clear to European politicians that they can gain political power (in the internet community) by talking about how evil it is to go arround spying on people. This meme will survie and they will not think their own spy's are as importent at budget time or when scandals come up in the future. Discrediting one at a time is the way to disarm the spys. The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell |
| Re:Europe is pissed off (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 24, @10:36AM EST (#211) |
| I can remember 12 or more years ago when it became apparent to business competing for contracts in Europe, and in France in particular, that somebody was using technology way beyond commercial capabilities to spy on them and giving the info to French competitors. There were several events where construction contracts in France were lost to French competitors by a few hundred dollars on projects bid out in the high 10's of millions. There was obviously some electronic eavesdropping/intercept going on in some of the cases because the way the bidding was done made it impossible for anyone to look at the contents of the other's sealed envelope prior to the bidding ceremony. Hotel rooms were bugged, telephones wiretapped, and probably computer screens read remotely (from moderately screened rooms, so the Radio Shack kit wouldn't cut it). Encryption was cracked that was of a nature a private party of that day would have found difficult, even if no big deal with today's CPU power. The French are pissed off now that we are more capable at this sort of thing than they are! (Whether we are in fact helping our businesses compete in Europe, I have no idea, but it would serve the French right--they were totally unrepentant at the time.) |
| Re:Europe is pissed off (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 24, @11:21AM EST (#213) |
| The importent thing is not who did what to who first, but can discredit the NSA and cut their funding now. I'm an American and I do not really care about the NSA spying on FRench companies, but I do care very much about the NSA spying on me.. and I'm willing to let a few large companies loose contracts to French companies to stop it. Plus, once the NSA is hurt we can use the "intelegence agency == bad" meme's that would be created to take on the French agency. Plus, If the French want to ban Windows or something I'm happy to see them do it. |
| Re:Europe is pissed off (Score:1) by Lowther on Thursday February 24, @06:57AM EST (#197) (User Info) |
| This places the UK government in an uncomfortable situation. On the one hand, as one of their stated goals is to be at the 'heart of Europe', they should be alarmed. On the other, as a signatory to the original UKUSA COMINT agreement, they are partly responsible for ECHELON (but perhaps not for its misuse).A bit of a dilemma, I'd say.... Also, when you consider the introduction by the UK government of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act alongside ECHELON, it is interesting. Under the new act, failure to hand over your encryption key to the police on demand may result in imprisonment. At the risk of being a conspiracy theorist, are they scared that all their investment in COMINT technology will go down the pan if everyone starts using encryption ? Semper in faecibus sumus, sole profundum variat |
| Re:Europe is pissed off (Score:1) by Sri Lumpa (rousseauj1SP@Myahoo.com) on Friday February 25, @06:36PM EST (#223) (User Info) http://www.opendvd.org |
| This places the UK government in an uncomfortable situation. On the one hand, as one of their stated goals is to be at the 'heart of Europe' The UK really wanting to be part of Europe? Let me laugh, they probably would prefer to ba a new American State than being a part of Europe, otherwise they wouldn't help the US screw other European countries. I guess De Gaulle was right when he said "L'Angleterre est le porte-avion de l'amerique en Europe" which means (lousely translated) "England is the plane-carrier of America in Europe". |
| web resources (slightly OT) (Score:1) by general_re (generalre@netscape.net) on Wednesday February 23, @05:32PM EST (#136) (User Info) |
| Just as a quick aside, for those who don't already know, the second link in spaceorb's post is from John Young's really excellent "Cryptome" site at jya.com/crypto.htm The site is primarily devoted to the technological and political aspects of law enforcement and intelligence agencies around the world, and is a great resource for those of you out there interested in things like echelon, TEMPEST, wiretapping, etc. Very cool and highly recommended... |
| Re:Europe is pissed off (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 23, @07:41PM EST (#167) |
| yeah, but they're still french so what good will it do them? |
| Re:Europe is pissed off (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 24, @06:54AM EST (#196) |
| France is one of the countries that hava banned use of encryption algorithms in radiolinks of GSM portable phones..and suppresses use of encryption in other ways too. Might it just be that every other spy agency is doing this stuff, the american /w brits etc. were just so stupid that they got caught? After having said this I might add: this is not a reason for stop trying to put an end to this kind of activity. It will never cease to exist but it must be kept possible to at least try to cover one's ass. |
| Huh? (Score:1) by Sadiq on Wednesday February 23, @02:59PM EST (#32) (User Info) http://www.free-services.com |
| It might just be me, but it said that they monitor all email/fax/telephone conversations in Europe.. but doesn't that require the co-operation of the other European telcos? What about email? wouldn't that require something somewhere along the line sorting out all the email stuff? If so.. where is it? Do our ISPs know about it? (I'm in the UK) or is everything based at the telcos.. (which'd make slight sense.. fax/email/phone all go through them.. one way or another..).. It just seems wierd that something of this power and complexity isn't completely out in the open if it could do what it is supposed to do.. "Everyone has the same amount of misfortunes and successes.. the great are the ones who exploit their successes and cut their losses on their misfortunes.." |
| Re:Huh? (Score:1) by burris on Wednesday February 23, @03:23PM EST (#58) (User Info) |
| What they do is setup giant antennas (dishes) in close proximity to the phone company's, pointing at the same satellites. They receive the same signals as the telcos. The difference is that the NSA's dishes are surrounded by electrified fences and guards armed with automatic weapons.
Burris |
| Re:Huh? (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 23, @05:40PM EST (#139) |
| All you have to do really is put taps at the highest-level connections of some country, eg. where the data gets out via some big backbone. (Is this why it's called Echelon, as in "hierarchy"?) Hint: there aren't that many big telecommunications companies... But who knows if this is known at some very high level throughout governments of the world. The 10 million dollar question becomes: what exactly are they monitoring? |
| It's still there... (Score:1) by Eruantalon on Wednesday February 23, @02:59PM EST (#33) (User Info) http://rush.baked.net/~jerbel/ |
| I think. At least I've so far gotten what looks to be the header to the document. Maybe everyone with Internet access all went to this page at once. Eruantalon The Annals of Middle-earth |
| The problem with Echelon (Score:5, Informative) by jd on Wednesday February 23, @03:01PM EST (#35) (User Info) |
| The biggest problem with Echelon is the people that it's monitoring. How so? Well, I've seen several posts suggesting writing to representitives. What good is that going to do? The NSA has refused to even say if the name even means anything to them, under Client - Lawyer privilage. Have you seen Congress push them into saying anything further? One try, and they seem satisfied they've done their part. Ok, what about this jamming? As I've said on a number of occasions, NOBODY does interception by keywords. Even IDS systems use pattern-recognition and context-sensitive detectors. Why would one of the largest, most advanced, most brilliant collection of programmers and mathematicians use a simple 'tcpdump | grep'? It makes no sense. Ok, so "conventional" jamming won't work, complaining gets nowhere, what CAN you do? I'm not going to say people are powerless, because they're not. However, they DO need to be unorthodox. You can't break encryption, if you don't know the algorithm, or possible set of algorithms. Even then, your probability of a false positive goes up considerably, the greater the number of keys and/or algorithms. There are a GREAT many encryption algorithms out there, some stronger than others but that's not really the point. If nobody can really tell which algorithm you're using, your effective keylength is equal to the key length of the -LONGEST- key possible, PLUS log2(number of algorithms). eg: PGP/GPG uses RSA to encrypt a secret key, but uses a simple secret cypher to encrypt the message itself, using that secret key. If someone modified PGP/GPG to allow you to pick (or have it randomly select) one of, oh, 16 algorithms for the secret encryption, then your effective keylength is equal to 128 + 4 = 132. That's a lot tougher to crack (it'll take 16 times as long) and might well prove too difficult for a real-time system, such as Echelon. Even so, I =can= tell you that Echelon is complex. My understanding is that it includes vast arrays of DSP chips embedded in the physical network, for pre-processing. The only hope is to make systems such as IPSec and PGP/GPG sufficiently advanced that one-size-fits-all solutions can't be used effectively. |
| Re:The problem with Echelon (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 23, @03:25PM EST (#60) |
| 'tcpdump | grep'? You mean their not? What's not plausible? Most of the government operators I know couldn't grep their way out of a wet paper bag. But hey, What do you expect for 22K a year. On the other end, in Colorado Springs at Peterson, you have 6-10 year enlisted guys working because they had to re-up because they had no real marketable skills on the outside. To top it off, they're working for some Frank Burns type guy who doesn't understand his job to begin with. |
| Re:The problem with Echelon (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 23, @03:49PM EST (#78) |
| ...experiments with neural nets for decryption in the 70's... |
| whoa there a second! (Score:3, Interesting) by Savage Henry Matisse (auto20356@DELETEMEhushmail.com) on Wednesday February 23, @04:15PM EST (#97) (User Info) http://www.geocities.com/HotSprings/2244/ |
| I'm a little confused by some of the assertions made above: 1) There seems to be an assumption that part of Echelon is the ability to compromise a 128-bit key in a negligible amount of time (i.e. instantly.) Now, I'm not super-duper-hardcore up to date on my Echelon readings, but I haven't seen any indication that anyone actually has the capability to brute force a 128 bit key in real-time. If I've just been living in a cave (not far from the truth) and simply failed to hear about this advance, someone please post a link/reference, or e-mail me (above address, minus the DELETME), or something-- I'd be really interested in such news. 2)PGP/GPG uses RSA to encrypt a secret key, but uses a simple secret cypher to encrypt the message itself, using that secret key. Maybe I'm reading this wrong, but it sounds like you're saying that PGP/GPG use a proprietary algo for their symmetrical crypto. At least with PGP, this is not the case. PGP (I think) currently uses IDEA, and used to use DES. While the latter is somewhat shady, these are hardly secret, and aren't that simple, either. 3) In the above set-up (with the PGP/GPG system which randomly selects the private-key algo to be used on a message-by-message basis) how do you securely communicate this to the recipient? Is the selected algo package with the key inside the public-key encrypted portion of the transmission, or do they just guess? (Not that having them just guess is such a bad idea-- it's sorta like those first versions of Public Key systems, the ones that used numeric puzzles for the keys. If the recipient just has the key, it'll take a more-or-less negligible amount of time for her to decrypt the message under each algo and see which version isn't gibberish.) Still, I'm not seeing the need for this, as per #1 I mean, if they can brute-force a 128-bit key in more-or-less no time, is making this time 16X longer gonna put that much of a knot in their britches? If 128-bit keys aren't secure, then this sort of arrangement is just a Band-Aid. Again, it's possible that I'm just totally mis-reading the above. Sorry if all of this is out-of-left-field. |
| Re:whoa there a second! (Score:1) by Slak on Wednesday February 23, @04:37PM EST (#111) (User Info) |
| I think your comments are on-target. According to current published technology, 128-bit encryption (and by this I mean TwoFish and other 'strong' algorithms) is tough. Who's to say what the NSA has cooked up, though. Mr. Schneier is far more qualified to comment. I would recommend http://www.counterpane.com/pitfalls.html for his assessment. Your understanding of #2 is correct, I believe. I'm pretty sure that all Public Key Crypto systems work the same way. A session key is generated (if this isn't random, it's a place to attack) and encrypted using public key crypto. The message itself is encrypted using a symetric algorithm. Thus you can do 2 things to try to read the message: 1. Brute force the key for the symetric algorithm. 2. Try to crack the public key/private key pair. This will then allow you to decrypt the session key for all communications, not that particular conversation. Ideally the determining the private key is much harder than brute forcing the symetric algorithm (since it allows you to decrypt *all* messages). Cheers, Slak |
| Re:whoa there a second! (Score:2) by jd on Wednesday February 23, @04:48PM EST (#119) (User Info) |
| 1) 128-bit keys are hard to brute-force, but the NSA isn't objecting strenuously to the export of RSA, which implies they have solved the problem of finding the prime factors of large numbers. If that -is- the case, then RSA is useless, as the NSA can read any encrypted message effectively instantly. 2) A secret cypher, also called a symmetric cypher, is simply one in which the encryption key and decryption key are the same. It's inherently weaker than a public key/private key pair, but it is much faster, which is why PGP uses it for the actual message itself. DES is trivial to break. The record for a hobbyist computer is 3 days, I believe. A transputer net could realistically reduce this total to under 3 minutes, without costing very much more. Dedicated, custom-built military-grade hardware, designed for this specific task, and cooled to obtain maximum performance, could probably crack DES within a matter of a few seconds, possibly less. IDEA isn't much better. There are a lot of weaknesses known for it. Actually, breaking a 128-bit key is probably irrelevent, as DES uses 56-bits. It's much quicker to ignore the 128-bit encryption, and derive the key by cracking the message. By doing so, you've reduced a slow, 128-bit cypher to a fast 56-bit one. By using multiple algorithms, though, you can't do that. You don't know how long the key is, therefore you don't know where the message is. This means you =HAVE= to break the header. You don't get the choice. No shortcuts, anymore. Sixteen times as long IS a significant amount, if you've a lot of encrypted traffic. It means that you can only crack 1/16th as many messages, within the same timespan, for a start. As this would have to be a real-time system, that means you've 1/16th the intelligence-gathering capacity. BUT, the problem is so much worse than that. Because the crackers can't use the shortcut, anymore, the problem isn't simply one of 128-bits to 132-bits, but 56-bits to 132-bits. THAT will take them 2^76 times as long, which would definitely saturate the system, no matter HOW powerful it was. |
| Re:whoa there a second! (Score:1) by Slak on Wednesday February 23, @05:09PM EST (#126) (User Info) |
| I'll agree with you on point 1. I'll agree that DES isn't secure (note: not the same as trivial to break). I find 3 minutes difficult to swallow. I'm not so sure that I would throw IDEA into the lo, though surely the AES candidates are stronger. I don't see your jump to ...breaking a 128-bit key is probably irrelevent, as DES uses 56-bits. I think you're confused; PGP uses IDEA with a session key. The session key is encrypted using RSA and the message is encrypted with IDEA using the session key. At this point, your math really confuses me. Why does one have to break the header? You could just brute force the IDEA (or whatever) keyspace. In fact, one hopes that this is easier to do than break the header. If you can break the header for 1 message, you can now recover all session keys and read all messages. Once you have the session key, all you have to do is plug it into 16 or 32 symetric algorithms and you've got the message. The problem is if the NSA can find public/private key pairs. This means they can: 1. Decrypt messages intended for me. 2. Sign messages in my name (spoof being me). Cheers, Slak |
| No clue... (was Re:whoa there a second!) (Score:2, Informative) by burris on Wednesday February 23, @05:22PM EST (#132) (User Info) |
1) 128-bit keys are hard to brute-force, but the NSA isn't objecting strenuously to the export of RSA, which implies they have solved the problem of finding the prime factors of large numbers. If that -is- the case, then RSA is useless, as the NSA can read any encrypted message effectively instantly.How do you know the NSA doesn't strenuously object to the export of RSA? Care to point to some NSA press releases? In any event, it's the Commerce department, specifically the Buereau of Export Administration (BXA) that controls export. They have relaxed controls because everyone is screaming at them and they know it's a lost cause anyway (genie is out of the bottle). There is no indication that the NSA has any extraordinary factoring capability or has built working quantum computers large enough to factor typical public keys. DES is trivial to break.DES is NOT trivial to break. 56-bit keys are trivial to break. There are no practical attacks to DES that are faster than complete trial and error. That's why triple-DES is currently the most trusted cipher around. IDEA isn't much better. There are a lot of weaknesses known for it.This is utter nonsense. Care to point to some references? The only really damning thing about IDEA is the patent issue. That's why it's not an AES contender. Actually, breaking a 128-bit key is probably irrelevent, as DES uses 56-bits.Not irrelevant, as DES has been proven to be a group. So 3-key EDE triple-DES has an effective keylength of 168-bits. All good encryption software supports triple-DES. Nobody seriously uses single-DES anymore. It's much quicker to ignore the 128-bit encryption, and derive the key by cracking the message. By doing so, you've reduced a slow, 128-bit cypher to a fast 56-bit one.More nonsense. You are also confusing symmetric block ciphers with asymmetric ciphers, which have totally different security properties and key length requirements. By using multiple algorithms, though, you can't do that. You don't know how long the key is, therefore you don't know where the message is. This means you =HAVE= to break the header. You don't get the choice. No shortcuts, anymore.Anyone who knows anything at all about crypto and security in general knows that "Security through obscurity is no security at all." All good cryptosystems are designed under the assumption that the attacker has complete details to the system and the only thing secret is the key. A properly designed system can withstand this assumption and has no need for obscurity. You don't really get 4 more bits under that assumption and 4 bits isn't worth much anyway.
Dr. Burris T. Ewell |
| Re:No clue... (was Re:whoa there a second!) (Score:1) by Xenu on Wednesday February 23, @06:08PM EST (#146) (User Info) |
| Not irrelevant, as DES has been proven to be a group. I thought that DES was proven not to be a group. K. Campbell and M. Wiener, "DES is not a group", Advances in Cryptology -- CRYPTO '92, pages 512-520. |
| Re:No clue... (was Re:whoa there a second!) (Score:2) by MindStalker (johnlar@tfn.spam.net) on Wednesday February 23, @06:21PM EST (#147) (User Info) http://www.how-toresource.com/index.html |
| He accually did have an interesting point about the header bit, and that isn't obsurity. Basically say I have a huge list of possible encryption methods using secret keys, which are encryped in the header. Also in the header is the desription of which algoritym I'm using. Now assuming this header is rather small, one could encrypt the heading at a very high bit, say 4096. And the message in a much lower bit say 56, now if there was no knowledge of which encryption method was used it would cause them to brute it for each and every possible method. ~A nerd is someone whose life revolved around computers and technology. A geek is someone whose life revolves around computers and technology, and likes it |
| Re:No clue... (was Re:whoa there a second!) (Score:1) by Slak on Wednesday February 23, @06:47PM EST (#158) (User Info) |
| Yes, but the point is that there aren't a significant number of possible algorithms. There are about 5 candidates for AES from a field of about 10. At best, you have 2^4 (roughly) possibities. Some are less strong than others (DES/Triple DES) and you can have dedicated hardware for those (US$100,000). Please remember that public key algorithms and symmetric key algorithms have very different contexts as far as what key-length is required for 'security'. Pulling numbers out of my ass, it could take the same amount of time to crack a symmetric algorithm's 64 bit key as it does to crack an asymmetric algorithm's 1024 bit key. Cheers, Slak |
| Re:No clue... (was Re:whoa there a second!) (Score:2) by jd on Thursday February 24, @08:34AM EST (#203) (User Info) |
| Yes, but if you don't know the algorithm, you don't know the key-length, either. So, if your header could be EQUALLY a symmetric algorithm with a 64-bit key OR an aymmetric algorithm with 1024 bit key, you'd have to try every possible combination of both. As for the number of algorithms, here is a short list of what's out there that -could- be used for something like this: Serpent, Rijndael, Square, IDEA, MARS, RC5, RC6, GOST, Skipjack, 3DES, Twofish, Blowfish, Safer+, TEA, DEAL and CAST. You can then insert -any- of these into an ellipitic curve algorithm, such as Pegwit. This essentially doubles the total range of algorithms you can use. This gives you a total range of 32 algorithms, which is sufficiently large to make brute-force decryption a much more complex process, with a much higher liklihood of getting apparently meaningful, but totally incorrect, output. |
| Re:whoa there a second! (Score:1) by um... Lucas (lk@caralis.com) on Wednesday February 23, @05:31PM EST (#135) (User Info) http://www.caralis.com/us/lucas/ |
| DES is probably irrelevant to this discussion. It's completely outdated at this point in time. That's why there's the whole AES submission process going on. Triple DES is probably more relevant these days, and it's effectively 112 bits... Even that's probably good enough for today and the next few years. The whole thing about crypto has been there is no security through obscurity. If you have a sufficiently strong algorithm, you can just hand the cipher text to whomever you'd like and the only way they can decode it is by bruteforcing the message. I'd think it'd be much simpler to implement a reliable system using keys that are 4 bits longer than to integrate 16 separate cryptosystems into one application. Remember, for every 1,000 lines of code programmers introduce how many bugs? The key to a reliable security solution would be to use an extremely well tuned application... Not a piece of bloatware with tons of interconnected parts. |
| Re:whoa there a second! (Score:1) by Ralph Wiggam (barry@no-meat-in-a-can.summex.com) on Wednesday February 23, @05:49PM EST (#142) (User Info) http://www.redmeat.com |
| I haven't seen any indication that anyone actually has the capability to brute force a 128 bit key in real-time. The NSA doesn't exactly mail out press releases saying "We can now crack 128 bit keys in 0.3 seconds. We rock." I'm no crypto fanatic, but I do find the whole situation interesting, specifically the human side more than the math. My reasons for believing that the NSA can crack just about anything out there are based on two things: money and brains. They have more of both than just about any other department in the government. We sit here and make fun of stupid things our govenment as a whole does, but of the three best programmers I know, all three have worked for the government at some point. Also, the ammount of money that the NSA has at thier disposal is pretty much outside the comprehension of the average person. When you're talking about computers, money buys you the biggest toys and the biggest toys do the coolest stuff. -B This is my sig...or something |
| Re:The problem with Echelon (Score:2, Insightful) by Slak on Wednesday February 23, @04:22PM EST (#102) (User Info) |
| Slashdot reported http://slashdot.org/articles/99/ 11/14/058247.shtml that the NSA holds various patents for sifting through transcripts. As far as PGP/GPG go, you assume that the NSA has no shortcuts on cracking IDEA, Blowfish, etc. The solution space for algorithms is so small as to not effect the workload. Don't count on "Security through obscurity (of algorithm)". Need I remind you that "when you assume, you make and ass out of you and me" :) The problem with Echelon is the lack of oversight. How can the NSA claim client/attorney privileges? What is being done to verify that ECHELON breaks no laws? As the saying goes, the first step to dictatorship is secrecy. Cheers, Slak |
| Re:The problem with Echelon (Score:1) by um... Lucas (lk@caralis.com) on Wednesday February 23, @04:27PM EST (#104) (User Info) http://www.caralis.com/us/lucas/ |
| GPG i thought didn't use RSA because of patent concerns? There also seems to be not much point in using random algorithm selection between 16 different ciphers. You get the same benefit by increasing your symetric keylength by 4 bits. Yay. By all accounts I've read 128 bits is just too hard to feasibly attempt these days... look at distributeds progress with their 64 bit project. |
| Re:The problem with Echelon (Score:2) by jd on Wednesday February 23, @04:34PM EST (#110) (User Info) |
| Many algorithms have a limited number of possible bit lengths at which they're any good. Too long or too short, and they become easily broken. Increasing the number of algorithms has two benefits. First, you're -guaranteed- a safe increase in effective bit-length, WITHOUT weakening the algorithm(s). Second, you increase the liklihood of a false positive, on the part of the cracker. This makes it harder for a cracker to be sure they have the right message. |
| "false positive"? (Score:1) by Savage Henry Matisse (auto20356@DELETEMEhushmail.com) on Wednesday February 23, @04:45PM EST (#116) (User Info) http://www.geocities.com/HotSprings/2244/ |
| Just wanted to make sure that I'm on the same page as everyone else: By "false positive" we mean "a text which appears to be the original plaintext really but is not"? So a "false positive" (in the sense we're using here) would be, for example, if I encrypted my plans to buy all of the choco-donuts and, when my nefarious enemy attempted to decrypt the plans, he ended up holding what looked like a transcript of a radio morning show out of Fargo? Is this the sort of situation we're talking about? What are the odds of this, really? I respect that doing thing A, B or C can make this more likely to occur, but how likely is it to begin with? -"S"HM |
| Re:"false positive"? (Score:2) by jd on Wednesday February 23, @04:59PM EST (#124) (User Info) |
| Yes. A "false positive" is any "valid" output, resulting from a decryption attempt, that is not the actual original message. As for the probability - this depends on the algorithm you're using. If you're using a straight XOR, nothing fancy, and a key of equal length to the message, then the message cannot be cracked by going through every possible key, because you will get every possible plain-text message of equal length. I don't know if there's any "formal analysis" of the liklihood of one encrypted message (algorithm unknown) "decrypting" to >1 "valid" plain-text, but it would seem reasonable that the longer the key-length and the greater the range of potential algorithms, the greater the liklihood of false positives. The main thing you'd have to watch for, though, is having two or more algorithms where a1(key1) generated the same output as a2(key2). Let's say you were using XOR, for example, as your encryption algorithm. Using XOR (256-key) as a second algorithm would be a big mistake, as you've gained no strength in doing so. (It's not made it any worse, either, but there may well be cases where it would.) |
| Re:"false positive"? (Score:2) by sjames (sjames@nospam.gdex.net) on Wednesday February 23, @06:32PM EST (#150) (User Info) http://www.members.gdex.net/sjames |
Let's say you were using XOR, for example, as your encryption algorithm. Using XOR (256-key) as a second algorithm would be a big mistake, as you've gained no strength in doing so. (It's not made it any worse, either, but there may well be cases where it would.) Actually, that would make the crypto considerably worse!! Since 256-x where x It's still a pain to brute, and there are still more than one possable decryption, but the space is vastly reduced. A 1k message will only have 8^1024 possable plaintexts rather than 256^1024. |
| Re:"false positive"? (Score:2) by sjames (sjames@nospam.gdex.net) on Wednesday February 23, @06:47PM EST (#157) (User Info) http://www.members.gdex.net/sjames |
OOOPS, that damned less than! Let's try that again! Using XOR (256-key) as a second algorithm would be a big mistake, as you've gained no strength in doing so. (It's not made it any worse, either, but there may well be cases where it would.) Actually, that would make the crypto considerably worse!! if key = x XOR (256-x), each char of plaintext is effectively XORed with 1 of eight possable bytes rather than 1 of 256. Furthermore, the 8 choices are all very neatly arranged so that it will start with 1s and end with 0s (in binary). To make matters worse, the distribution is screwed and heavily favors 11111110b so that the majority of characters have all but the last bit flipped. |
| Re:The problem with Echelon (Score:1) by um... Lucas (lk@caralis.com) on Wednesday February 23, @05:14PM EST (#128) (User Info) http://www.caralis.com/us/lucas/ |
| Blowfish scales from 32 to 448 bits. That's one example. I just popped by the counterpane website to find that... That's a LOT of scalability in one algorithm. With PKI, it really seems that all you can do is shift the bottleneck from one point to another... Either it's the RSA component, the symetric component, the RNG, or the key servers themselves... By the way, PGP 6.5 offers a choice of RSA or Diffie Hellman for key exchange and IDEA CAST or Triple DES as the symetetric component. |
| tcpdump | grep is probably the *1st* thing they do (Score:1) by divec on Wednesday February 23, @06:59PM EST (#159) (User Info) |
| Since most communications aren't encrypted, including a surprising amount of sensitive stuff, tcpdump | grep probably gets more data than any subsequent analysis. After that it'll be diminishing returns on computing time. |
| effectiveness of echelon (Score:4, Informative) by mistral (mistral@pantheon.yale.edu) on Wednesday February 23, @03:06PM EST (#40) (User Info) http://pantheon.yale.edu/~mistral |
| how effective do slashdotters think echelon really is? and do you think they feed any data to U.S. commercial concerns? I've been thinking a bit about this recently; some simple calculations demonstrate that the amount of material they have to look through is simply phenomenal. The rumors say that the system has links to telephone lines, faxes, email systems, satellite links, and who knows what else. So, some extremely quick and dirty estimates: I live in Boston with three other people and their respective girlfriends; most of us have cell phones. Our house has two phone lines, DSL, and ten computers hooked up behind a firewall. My roommate has a Palm V with an omnisky. That's eight or nine voice streams and as many data streams. The data streams are going all the time, and are all multiplexed through our single DSL connection. Now, admittedly we're a little more wired than most. So we'll scale this down a bit. Assume the government only is interested in monitoring large cities and a few out of the way enclaves dotted around the map. Maybe the ten largest US cities and 150 known subversive groups. Including the greater metro area, each city has maybe 4 million people on average, implying about 1.6 million families per city, giving 16 million families total. We can guess that (plus or minus a few kooks) nearly every family has at least one phone line and 2 out of 5 have at least one cell phone. Probably 60% have an internet connection. This gives us 32 million data streams, to monitor in real time, and at odd hours. Now given the current state of speech-to-text software, and assuming the NSA is 15-20 years ahead of the state-of-the-art (a very dubious assumption, these days), we'll also figure that with their software they can decrypt 200 voice streams per second with a pentium III. That still implies that they need the equivalent computing power of 160,000 high-end workstations. Ok, this is not outside the realm of possibility. But it's right on the edge! Add in the complexity of understanding and dealing with different accents and different languages, static, spread spectrum cell phones, demultiplexing LANs, tapping who knows how many switches, debugging the monitoring software and releasing (secret!) updates into the field, dealing with code words and both simple and complex black box and white box encryption, and dealing with the noise of slashdotters putting in things like "kill the president" and "natalie portman is trafficking in hot grits disguised as cocaine to pay off communist subversives," and we see that if Echelon exists, it's probably close to useless. And a horrible waste of taxpayers' money. Though I guess developing such a omprehensive system could be valuable for use in targeted situations, like focusing on transmissions in a limited geographic area during high-tension conflicts. These estimates are very much back-of-the-envelope, but does anybody see anything fundamentally wrong with them? -- neil -- neil inala |
| Re:effectiveness of echelon (Score:2) by Bearpaw on Wednesday February 23, @03:34PM EST (#65) (User Info) |
| These estimates are very much back-of-the-envelope, but does anybody see anything fundamentally wrong with them? I'm not sure I follow your reasoning, but I think I see a few issues. 1) Few people so far have always-on data streams. 2) Practically nobody has always-on voice streams. 3) There's no need to do deep analysis on everything. Assuming that this system exists in some form, there's no doubt some sort of funneling effect. 99.9etc percent can be safely ignored after a quick keyword skim. The stuff taken off the top can be skimmed a little more slowly, as a first-pass context check. The cream of that can be skimmed still more carefully. And so on. 4) Other forms of intelligence -- and results from the system itself -- can be used to focus the "attention" of the system more efficiently. 5) I'm not sure using a "number of workstations" yardstick is meaningful for the kind of analysis they may be doing. (Specific-purpose hardware could give them a big edge.) |
| Re:effectiveness of echelon (Score:1) by mistral (mistral@pantheon.yale.edu) on Wednesday February 23, @03:47PM EST (#75) ( |