Subject: Re: Internet monitoring From: "nikst" Date: 1999/06/06 Newsgroups: soc.culture.russian.moderated From: "Michael B. Kagalenko" Subject: Re: Internet monitoring Date: Sat, 5 Jun 1999 sergei zamascikov wrote: > There is a fundamental difference between intelligence service snooping > on the Internet and European legal authorities passing legislation > which > makes possible authorized inquires by law enforcement agencies( similar > to phone tapping and intercepting mail. > And there is still a bigger difference when the FSB on a basis of not > yet passed legislation asks Internet providers to give full access > to information without obtaining a court order. > Indeed, what is disturbing that noone else compalined. Particularly > taking into account that most of ISPs are JVS with the US companies. Perhaps, they did not complain because they are aware of the state of communication privacy on the West, and therefore correctly understand that SORM is a belated and half-hearted effort to catch up with USA. USA currently has in place the network called "ECHELON" which intercepts, stores, searches and indexes every kind of electronic communications: FAX, e-mail, telephone, videophone calls, telex, satellite transmission, microwave links and so on. The existence of this network has been an "open secret" for quite some time, but it is hardly ever covered by the USA media. I urge the reader to peruse those URLS: http://www.theage.com.au/daily/990523/news/news3.html : "Australia has become the first country openly to admit that it takes part in a global electronic surveillance system that intercepts the private and commercial international communications of citizens and companies from its own and other countries. " http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/19.58.html#subj7.1 : "EuroParl Rpt on NSA, Trade, & Crypto Controls A draft ("consultation version") of a report by the European Parliament's Office for Scientific and Technological Option Assessment (STOA) entitled "AN APPRAISAL OF TECHNOLOGIES OF POLITICAL CONTROL" has been submitted to the EuroParl's Civil Liberties and Interior Committee. ... As expected, a portion of the report highlights the NSA's Echelon surveillance system, developed and managed in conjunction with its sister SigIntel agencies from the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. Snippets quoted give the flavor, capturing the tenor of fear common in European media references to the NSA: "[...] unlike many of the electronic spy systems developed during the cold war, ECHELON is designed for primarily non- military targets: governments, organizations and businesses in virtually every country. The ECHELON system works by indiscriminately intercepting very large quantities of communications and then siphoning out what is valuable using artificial intelligence aids like Memex to find key words." "[...] Within Europe, all e-mail, telephone and fax communications are routinely intercepted by the United States National Security Agency, transferring all target information from the European mainland via the strategic hub of London then by satellite to Fort Meade in Maryland via the crucial hub at Menwith Hill in the North York Moors of the UK." The priority targets of this surveillance system are selected by the participating intelligence agencies -- only one of which is European -- on the basis of their individual military and political interests, notes STOA. "Whilst there is much information gathered about potential terrorists, there is a lot of economic intelligence, notably intensive monitoring of all the countries participating in the GATT negotiations...." Finally, to the person who suggested including spurious keywords into e-mail to overwhelm snooping software: don't bother. Below is Usenet posting by the noted civilian cryptographer Bruce Shneier " Newsgroups: sci.crypt,alt.security,alt.privacy From: schneier@chinet.chinet.com (Bruce Schneier) Subject: "Interesting Stuff" Checkers at the NSA Message-ID: Organization: Chinet - Public Access UNIX Date: Thu, 19 May 1994 17:40:15 GMT This is from a flyer that NSA people have been distributing: NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY -- TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER Information Sorting and Retrieval by Language or Topic Description: This technique is an extremely simple, fast, completely general mathod of sorting and retrieving machine- readable text according to language and/or topic. The method is totally independent of the particular languages or topics of interest, and relies for guidance solely upon exemplars (e.g., existing documents, fragments, etc.) provided by the user. It employs no dictionaries keywords, stoplists, stemmings, syntax, semantics, or grammar; nevertheless, it is capable of distinguishing among closely related toopics (previously considered inseparable) in any language, and it can do so even in text containing a great many errors (typically 10 - 15% of all characters). The technique can be quickly implemented in software on any computer system, from microprocessor to supercomputer, and can easily be implemented in inexpensive hardware as well. It is directly scalable to very large data sets (millions of documents). Commercial Application: Language and topic-independent sorting and retieval of documents satisfying dynamic criteria defined only by existing documents. Clustering of topically related documents, with no prior knowledge of the languages or topics that may be present. It desired, this activity can automatically generate document selectors. Specializing sorting tasks, such as identification of duuplicate or near-duplicate documents in a large set. National Security Agency Research and Technology Group - R Office of Research and Technology Applications (ORTA) 9800 Savage Road Fort George G. Meade, MD 20755-6000 (301) 688-0606 If this is the stuff they're giving out to the public, I can only imagine what they're keeping for themselves. Bruce Schneier Counterpane Systems For a good prime, call 391581 * 2^216193 - 1 schneier@chinet.com" If you are _really_ concerned about the security of your e-mail, use the program called PGP ("pretty good privacy") and/or anonymous cypherpunks remailers. ****** (end of original message) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ You can view this message and the related discussion by following this link: http://www.deja.com/=dnc/[ST_rn=ps]/dnquery.xp?search=thread&svcclass=dnserver&recnum=%3c004701beafd1$6e4824c0$455b9ac2@nikst%3e%231/2 We hope to see you soon at Deja.com, the discussion network. http://www.deja.com/=dnc/[ST_rn=ps]/