Re: TEMPEST

[joelm@eskimo.com (Joel McNamara)]

Tim May wrote:

>TEMPEST has very little to do with Cypherpunks goals, actually. First,
>buying such a gadget, tweaking it, exploring capabilities, etc., would
>lead to what? The ability to park a van in front of someone's house
>and--maybe--monitor their screens? We already know this is possible.
>(You all knew that, didn't you?)

If a Cypherpunk goal is to champion electronic privacy, it seems to me that
it is important to fully understand any threats to the methods used to
ensure privacy.  The old Sun Tzu "know your enemy" philosophy.  If I was
running a Data Haven, I'd want to understand how and if my system could be
passively eavesdropped on, and what countermeasures to take to minimize the
risk.  (Second or third down the list from knowing my encryption algorithm
was secure.)

Granted, I'd spend more efforts with firewalls because a hacker/cracker
attack would be a more realistic threat, but if there was even the most
remote chance that a government agency/well-funded concern with TEMPEST
capability was interested in me, I'd sure like to make their job more difficult.

The thing that I find frustrating about TEMPEST, is most informed people say
"yes, it's possible," but I have encountered only breadcrumbs of real-world,
technical information and sources on it (the VanEck article, the BBC tape,
Grady Ward's paper, etc.).  This is what prompted the original message to
the list.  Yes, TEMPEST is real.  But what I'm trying to do is shift out
TEMPEST reality (and capabilities) from the magical black-box in parked vans
tales.

Joel McNamara
joelm@eskimo.com - finger for PGP key