Blaming Encryption

EisPick writes: "Just as a previous generation wrestled with whether or not to blame physicists for The Bomb, there are some misguided folks who are blaming Phil Zimmermann for the ability of terrorists to communicate confidentially. He tells the Washington Post, 'It has been a horrific few days.'" Meanwhile, John Gilmore has posted far and wide a call to mirror encryption code outside the United States, since export regulations are making a comeback.

Comments

Re:Time to get learned. Which package do we get?

[leviramsey]

So for folks who are keenly following this situation but not sure what the next step is... what's the most commonly used Win9x compatable pacakge I can grab? I'd like to make sure I meet community standards and not start employing some backwoods, obscure encryption system

Sounds like GnuPG is for you. You can download it from http://www.gnupg.org

Misdirected Hate Mail

[Phaid]

Bin Laden and company are better known for using steganography. There's no indication that they use PGP in email; apparently their favorite method is to get free websites at e.g. GeoCities and embed messages in image files.

Re:Was crypto used?

[vrt3]

No. According to The Register, Feds complain Bin Laden not using hi-tech equipment:

"He switched off a lot of communications technologies," a US intelligence spokesman said.

And:

"This isn't low-tech," a former NSA consultant has been quoted as saying. "You'd have to really call it no-tech."

What bin Laden uses

[John Harrison]

Many posts have quoted the BBC article in which bin Laden is said to use 'no-tech'. If you go back and actually read the article you will find that the NSA guys are saying that he doesn't use modern communication methods, not that he doesn't use encryption. There is a difference.

According to the reported from ABC (I have forgotten his name) who went over to Afghanistan a few years ago and interviewed bin Laden he DOES use crypto.

A few years ago he stopped using cell phones and satellite phones to communicate, knowing that those technologies could be monitored.

So what does he use now to send out secret orders?

Encrypted Zip disks sent by courier who secretly take the disks out of Afghanistan. It wasn't clear whether the disks were then sent by snail mail or whether the data on them was transmitted using the internet. It also wasn't clear if PGP was used. Is his network large enough for key distribution to be a big hassle? If not he could skip public key crypto entirely and just use 3DES with a list of keys or long passphrases.

For his edicts which are meant for public consumption he makes video tapes of himself and then sends them out to arab media outlets which then broadcast them.