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Privacy As Roadkill
>Date: Mon, 31 Jan 1994 12:37:12 -0800 (PST)
>From: Dave Wren <[email protected]>
>Subject: Privacy As Roadkill
>To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]>
>Errors-To: [email protected]
>Sender: [email protected]
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>
>---------- Forwarded message ----------
>Date: Sun, 30 Jan 1994 21:00:50 -0800
>From: "Brock N. Meeks" <[email protected]>
>To: [email protected]
>Subject: Privacy As Roadkill
>
>
>
>Jacking in from a "Private No More" Port:
>
>Washington, DC -- If privacy isn't already the first victim of
>roadkill along the information superhighway, then it's about to be.
>
>A law enforcement panel addressing the Administration's Information
>Infrastructure Task Force Working Group on Privacy told a public
>meeting here last week that it wanted to "front load" the National
>Information Infrastructure with trap door technologies that would
>allow them to easy access to digital conversations; eavesdropping
>on any conversation or capturing electronic communications
>midstream.
>
>But only for "the bad guys." Us honest, hard working, law abiding
>citizens have nothing to fear from these law enforcement agencies
>selling out our privacy rights to make their jobs easier. Nope, we
>can rest easy, knowing that child pornographers, drug traffickers
>and organized crime families will be sufficiently thwarted by law
>enforcement's proposed built-in gadgetry for the national
>information infrastructure.
>
>There's just a small problem: Law enforcement agencies, any law
>enforcement agency, has yet to prove it needs all these proposed
>digital trap doors. In fact, according to a U.S. Assistant
>Attorney appearing on the panel, "Right now most law enforcement
>personnel don't have any idea what the NII is."
>
>Gore Gives Go Ahead
>===================
>
>Panel members, representing the Justice Dept., FBI and U.S.
>Attorney's office, said that they took Vice President Gore's
>promise that the White House would work to ensure that the NII
>would "help law enforcement agencies thwart criminals and
>terrorists who might use advanced telecommunications to commit
>crimes," as tacit approval of their proposals to push for digital
>wiretap access and government mandated encryption policies.
>
>Gore buried those remarks deep in a speech he made in Los Angeles
>earlier this month when the Administration first fleshed out how it
>planned to rewrite the rules for communications in a newer, perhaps
>more enlightened age. Those remarks went unnoticed by the
>mainstream press. But readers here were forewarned.
>
>Fuck Ross Perot's NAFTA-induced "giant sucking sound." That
>"thump" you just heard was Law Enforcement running over the privacy
>rights of the American public on its way to the information
>superhighway. The real crime is that the collision barely dented
>the damn fender.
>
>This cunning and calculated move by law enforcement to install
>interception technologies all along the information superhighway
>was blithely referred to as "proactive" law enforcement policy by
>Assistant U.S. Attorney, Northern Dist. of California Kent Walker.
>Designing these technologies into future networks, which include
>all telephone systems, would ensure that law enforcement
>organizations "have the same capabilities that we all enjoy right
>now," Walker said.
>
>With today's wiretap operations, the Feds must get a court to
>approve their request, but only after supplying enough evidence
>warrant one. But Walker seemed to be lobbying for the opposite.
>Giving the Feds the ability to listen in first and give
>justification later was "no big difference," he said. Besides, "it
>would save time and money."
>
>It's Us vs. Them
>=================
>
>For Walker privacy issues weighed against law enforcement needs are
>black and white, or rather "good guys" vs. "bad guys." For
>example, he said the rapid rise of private (read: non-government
>controlled) encryption technologies didn't mean law enforcement
>would have to work harder. On the contrary, "it only means we'll
>catch less criminals," he said.
>
>But if law enforcement is merely concerned with the task of "just
>putting the bad guys in jail," as James Settle, head of the FBI's
>National Computer Crime Squad states, then why are we seeing an
>unprecedented move by government intelligence agencies into areas
>they have historically shied from? Because law enforcement
>agencies know their window of opportunity for asserting their
>influence is right now, right at the time the government is about
>to take on a fundamental shift in how it deals privacy issues
>within the networks that make up the NII, says David Sobel, general
>counsel for Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility
>(CPSR), who also spoke as a panel member.
>
>"Because of law enforcement's concerns (regarding digital
>technologies), we're seeing an unprecedented involvement by federal
>security agencies in the domestic law enforcement activities,"
>Sobel said.
>
>Sobel dropped-kicked this chilling fact from behind the closed
>doors of the Clinton Administration into the IITF's lap: For the
>first time in history, the National Security Agency (NSA) "is now
>deeply involved in the design of the public telecommunications
>network."
>
>Go ahead. Read it again.
>
>Sobel backs up his claims with hundreds of pages of previously
>classified memos and reports obtained under the Freedom of
>Information Act. The involvement of the NSA in the design of our
>telephone networks is, Sobel believes, a violation of federal
>statutes.
>
>Sobel's also concerned that the public might soon be looking down
>the throat of a classified telecommunications standard being
>created. Another move he calls "unprecedented," is that if the
>NSA, FBI and other law enforcement organizations have their way,
>the design of the national telecommunications network will end up
>classified and withheld from the public.
>
>Sobel is dead bang on target with his warnings.
>
>The telecommunications industry and FBI have set up an ad hoc
>working group to see if a technical fix for digital wiretapping can
>be found to make the Bureau happy. That way, legislation doesn't
>need to be passed that might mandate such FBI access and stick the
>Baby Bells with eating the full cost of reengineering their
>networks.
>
>This joint group was formed during a March 26, 1992 meeting at
>FBI's Quantico, Va., facilities, according previously classified
>FBI documents released under Freedom of Information Act. The group
>was only formalized late last year, working under the auspices of
>the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS). The
>joint industry-FBI group operates under the innocuous sounding name
>of the Electronic Communications Service Provider Committee
>(ECSPC).
>
>The ECSPC meets monthly with intent of seeking a technological
>"solution" to the FBI's request for putting a trap door into
>digital switches that would allow them easy access to those
>conversations. To date, no industry solution has been found for the
>digital wiretap problem, according to Kenneth Raymond, a Nynex
>telephone company engineer, who is the industry co-chairman of the
>group.
>
>Oh, there's also a small, but nagging problem: The FBI hasn't
>provided a concrete basis that such solutions are needed, Raymond
>said. CPSR's Sobel raised these same points during the panel
>discussion.
>
>The telecommunications industry is focused on "trying to evaluate
>just what is the nature of the [digital access] problem and how we
>can best solve it in some reasonable way that is consistent with
>cost and demand," Raymond said. One solution might be to write
>digital wiretap access into future switch specifications, he said.
>
>If and when the industry does find that solution, do you think the
>FBI will put out a press release to tell us about it? "I doubt it
>very much," said FBI agent Barry Smith with the Bureau's
>Congressional Affairs office. "It will be done quietly, with no
>media fanfare."
>
>Is it just me or are these headlights getting REALLY close?
>
>The FBI's Settle is also adamant about trap door specifications
>being written into any blue prints for the National Information
>Infrastructure. But there's a catch. Settle calls these "security
>measures," because they'll give his office a better chance at
>"catching bad guys." He wants all networks "to be required to
>install some kind of standard for security." And who's writing
>those standards? You guessed it: The NSA with input from the FBI
>and other assorted spook agencies.
>
>Settle defends these standards saying that the "best we have going
>for us is that the criminal element hasn't yet figured out how to
>use this stuff [encryption and networks in general]. When they do,
>we'll be in trouble. We want to stay ahead of the curve."
>
>In the meantime, his division has to hustle. The FBI currently has
>only 25 "net literate" personnel, Settle admitted. "Most of these
>were recruited 2 years ago," he said. Most have computer science
>degrees and were systems administrators at time, he said.
>
>You think that's funny? Hell, the Net is a still small community,
>relatively speaking. One of your friends is probably an FBI Net
>Snitch, working for Settle. Don't laugh.
>
>Don't Look Now, Your Privacy Is Showing
>=======================================
>
>The law enforcement establishment doesn't think you really know
>what you expect when it comes to privacy.
>
>U.S. Attorney Walker says: "If you ask the public, 'Is privacy
>more important than catching criminals?' They'll tell you, 'No.'"
>
>(Write him with your own thoughts, won't you?)
>
>Because of views like Walker's, the Electronic Communications
>Privacy Act (ECPA) "needs to be broader," said Mike Godwin, legal
>services counsel, for Electronic Frontier Foundation, speaking as
>a panel member. The ECPA protects transmitted data, but it also
>needs to protect stored data, he said. "A person's expectation of
>privacy doesn't end when they store something on a hard disk."
>
>But Walker brushed Godwin aside saying, "It's easy to get caught up
>in the rhetoric that privacy is the end all be all."
>
>Do you have an expectation of privacy for things you store on your
>hard disk, in your own home? Walker says that idea is up for
>debate: "Part of this working group is to establish what is a
>reasonable expectation of privacy."
>
>That's right. Toss everything you know or thought you knew about
>privacy out the fucking window, as you cruise down the fast lane of
>the information superhighway. Why? Because for people like
>Walker, those guardians of justice, "There has to be a balance
>between privacy needs and law enforcement needs to catch
>criminals," he says.
>
>Balance, yes. Total abrogation of my rights? Fat chance.
>
>
>Meeks out...
>
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