Re: "Drift net fishing," GAK, FBI, and NSA

[The Deviant <deviant@pooh-corner.com>]

On Sun, 6 Oct 1996, jim bell wrote:

[...]
> 
> Sure, such a capacity is small compared with the total Internet traffic, but 
> I assume that most traffic could be excluded from recording if its source 
> was known, etc.  They'd exclude anything from "probably-okay" web pages, they'd 
> trim space-hogging graphics, etc.  "Just the facts, ma'am."     Call the 
> whole thing "retroactive-selective-drift-net-fishing," if you will.
> 

Yes, but because of the fact that they can't store everything, and will
have to be selective, many holes can be found.  This is why we have stego.

>
> Once this data is stored away the government would determine (perhaps years 
> after the fact?) which data they want to decrypt, possibly based on crimes 
> committed long after the data was recorded.  This information might reveal 
> contacts, etc.   Obviously they have no prayer of doing real-time analysis.  
> Even so, it makes it far more practical to do the equivalent of drift-net 
> fishing if they can exclude 99.9999%+ of the traffic from their decryption 
> attempts.  56-bit encryption doesn't look so ominous to them in this case.
>

But most of the time it would take them long enough to decrypt that the
statute of limitations for the crime has worn out.  So unless they can do
it real-time, or at least within a _few_ years, it becomes useless except
for defimation of the suspect's character.
 
> Jim Bell 
> jimbell@pacifier.com 

 --Deviant
You scratch my tape, and I'll scratch yours.