Former FBI Chief Keeps Up Anti-Crypto Campaign

ganns.com writes "Former FBI director Louis Freeh is urging lawmakers to limit encryption products that don't include backdoors for government surveillance." Still urging, that is.

Comments

They can urge all they want

[Unknown Poltroon]

Ive got pig latin, paper and pencil, and too much free time on my hands. Lets see them decrypt my mail. Even I cant read my damn handwriting.

Still urging...

[program21]

Still only urging, for now. I'm sure at some point one of our fine elected officials will introduce some 'anti-terrorism' bill that mandates government backdoors in crypto, in the interest of 'national security' and 'definding against terrorists', of course.

Re:Still urging...

[uncoveror]

If John Law has a backdoor, soon anyone will be able to use it. Anybody who doesn't get that probably has a VCR flashing 12:00, and is still looking for their "any" key. Even without them using encryption, the F***ing Bungling Idiots can't catch terrorists. We need to scrap the FBI, and start over.

Re:Still urging...

[cpeterso]

Why do we even have an FBI? What does the FBI do that individual state police departments cannot? Hunt down aliens?

Re:Still urging...

[program21]

I understand that if there is a backdoor, it will eventually be exploited. But try explaining it to the public over the word of the FBI, who's no doubt going to claim that the existence of a backdoor helps fight terrorism.
This may be easier now that it would have been 2 years ago, given the high-profile virii that have been around the media lately. People may (I say may, not will) realize that this is asking for something to happen. Then again, they may not.

Re:Still urging...

[Anonymous Coward]

Investigate breaches of Federal law across multiple state jusrisdictions. Most law-enforcement agencies' right to investigate a crime, pursue a fugitive, make an arrest, carry a weapon, et c. ends at the town/county/state line. FBI jurisdiction extends across all 50 states, all other U.S. territories, and fifty-two other countries (to, of course, a limited extent).

What is the deal with this guy?

[Dr. Bent]

Seriously! What? It's like he lost the password to his encrypted pr0n archive, and ever since then he's just been bitter. Or maybe he's just jealous that the NSA could crack everything and his agency never could.

Re:What is the deal with this guy?

[dogfart]

Or maybe he's just jealous that the NSA could crack everything and his agency never could.

I've heard that historically this has been a bone of contention. The FBI would find some criminal using a home brewed encryption scheme, give it to the NSA. The NSA folks would figure it out on their lunch hour and have a good laugh. Absolutely no comparison between FBI and NSA when it comes to crypto skill level. This is from James Bamford The Puzzle Palace, p471 in the Penguin Books paperback edition.

Re:What is the deal with this guy?

[Tackhead]

> > Or maybe he's just jealous that the NSA could crack everything and his agency never could.
>
> I've heard that historically this has been a bone of contention. The FBI would find some criminal using a home brewed encryption scheme, give it to the NSA. The NSA folks would figure it out on their lunch hour and have a good laugh. Absolutely no comparison between FBI and NSA when it comes to crypto skill level.

I hate to defend Freeh on crypto policy, but it may be more than just jealousy on his part.

Consider that if the bad guy's homebrew crypto scheme was nontrivial, NSA might do more harm than good to disclose that it had been broken. I can think of a time when an FBI prosecutor saying "We used differential cryptanalysis and broke the guy's DES implementation" on the record, in court, would probably have done a great deal of harm.

If that example doesn't ring any bells, imagine the following hypothetical scenario: An overzealous British sex-crimes prosecutor (FBI) in 1940 comes out and says "Alan Turing's encrypted notes [this is hypothetical, remember] are actually homosexual love letters! A guy at Bletchley (NSA) told us about something called 'Enigma' and voila, it's kinda like what Turing's using in his letters! If Turing's using something this complicated just to conceal his love letters, imagine what strong crypto the Germans must have!"

So perhaps it's not jealousy as much as it's sour grapes. Maybe Freeh's pissed that even when a cryptosystem can be cracked, NSA's too smart to tell him about it :-)

Not quite related to encryption...

[questionlp]

but it looks like the Appeals court has OK'd fax interception (as per this News.com article).

One piece at a time, the DOJ (which oversees the FBI) is pulling privacy and our rights out from beneath us.

Re:Legality

[forsetti]

But how will the govt know whether that is a terrorist using encryption, or a regular joe sending lots of encrypted personal messages, not realizing that personal stuff "should not" be encrypted?

And why should "personal, non-secret, communication" be not encrypted? Even if I am just sending my wife a grocery list or sending my aunt a christmas list, I don't want the hacker along the way to be able to read it!

Re:Legality

[DustMagnet]

Terrorist can always just use codes words. For all you know, when I say "blueberry" in a comment, I'm telling all my friends I'm going to have a big party next Friday.

Outlawing (or discouraging) encryption hurts innocent people far more than terrorist or your favorate evil of the day.

This is rediculous.

[tachyonflow]

Even if Congress does pass laws restricting how citizens can use crypto, I don't think terrorists will be motivated to use the restricted versions of the software.

When crypto is outlawed, only outlaws will have crypto.

Red Herring, and LIES

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

The man is a disingenous fraud, a good politician, and an incompetant in the fields of security and intelligence.

Freeh needs to find a whipping boy for the failures of correlating the various peices intelligence datum, which occurred on his watch. Restricting legal access to crypto will only assist in the illicit observation of constitutionally protected speech by private individuals, and destroy what little competitive advantage is enjoyed by U.S. software industries over their counterparts in Israel and India.

The algorithms and the source will not go "back in the can."

Louis Freeh is responsible, in a large part, for the biggest intelligence failure in modern recollection. None of the failure in this effort was for lack of access to encrypted communications, but from standard failures of organization and communications within the concerned agencies.

The Heritage Foundation - not normally critical of the FBI's mission - has this to say:

But what if FBI intelligence fails to collect, analyze and share this information? This could happen, the commission found, because "the guidelines under which FBI agents operate ... are badly written and confusing. These are guidelines that set out the terms under which the FBI can open a preliminary inquiry against somebody who may be suspected of being a terrorist. All of us read them (they run to about 42 pages) and we had a number of current and former FBI agents testify that they found them confusing."

The commission recommended that then Attorney General Janet Reno and former FBI Director Louis Freeh rewrite the guidelines into "more easily understood English."

Moreover, the FBI had no procedure for disseminating useful information for analysis within the agency or sharing it with other government agencies.

Information which was obtained, in Los Angeles, for example, but did not immediately apply to the case at hand, would simply not leave the regional office, even though it might provide important clues for another investigation, says Ambassador L. Paul Bremer, Ambassador at Large for Counterintelligence during the Reagan Administration and former Managing Director of Kissinger Associates.

Encryption wasn't used in this instance. No evidence for it has ever been found. Freeh has a broader, more insidious agenda here, involving free speech and civil liberties. Unfortunately, the record shows that deep, analytical thinking about these issues is outside the grasp of the majority of America's elected representatives.

Re:Red Herring, and LIES

[neocon]

Kids these days...

Actually, the record shows that despite a lot of lobbying by the Clinton administration, spearpointed by Freeh himself, our representatives made the right choice, and said no to key escrow.

In other words, despite the efforts of those like Freeh, the system's worked pretty well at safeguarding people's rights...

Re:Red Herring, and LIES

[jeffy124]

The algorithms and the source will not go "back in the can."

I believe the proper & more accurate expression is "getting toothpaste back in the tube"

Also, he must think terrorists are idiots. If you knew that Country X required backdoors in crypto products, would you buy a crypto product made in Country X and then use it to hide plans about lauching attacks against Country X? It doesnt take much for terrorists to get their encryption products from more lenient sources - like Canada for example.

And like you said, it's already out there, and ain't goin back.

Frankly - I dont think his urging will go very far beyond discussions like these.

Re:Red Herring, and LIES

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Actually, the record shows that despite a lot of lobbying by the Clinton administration, spearpointed by Freeh himself, our representatives made the right choice, and said no to key escrow.

In other words, despite the efforts of those like Freeh, the system's worked pretty well at safeguarding people's rights...

Right, you are!

As they say, "That was then, this is now." Personally, I wouldn't expect the same kind of result in the post 9/11 period of hysteria, coupled with the kind of assaults mounted by the Bush administration.

But,
I do hope you continue to be correct...

Re:Red Herring, and LIES

[lal]

According to Ronald Kessler, author of The Bureau: The Secret History of the FBI, Freeh is also responsible for the failure of the FBI to keep up with technology. At the end of Freeh's tenure, FBI agents were using 486-class computers and had to email attachments to home computers to transmit pictures. Freeh resisted upgrading the FBI mainframe infrastructure as well. He's clearly not capable of making judgments about crypto.

Re:Red Herring, and LIES

[Alsee]

>The algorithms and the source will not go "back in the can."
I believe the proper & more accurate expression is "getting toothpaste back in the tube"

I much preffer a quote from Joe Garelli on News Radio - "You can't take something off the Internet. That's like trying to take the pee out of a swimming pool".

-

Cat's already out of the bag

[Gerry Gleason]

You can't take away the technical capability to encrypt because this is already widely distributed code. Even when it was illegal to export strong encryption, people just based any software product that did this someplace else. It's a global neighborhood, at least when it comes to tech savy groups.

As a practical matter, basic encryption needs to be part of a lot of emerging systems. There is so much going on in digital wireless, and it isn't going to stop soon. With processors getting faster each year, you have to up the number of bits in your encryption just to stay ahead of what can be broken with commodity hardware and dumb software (brute force).

The government will always have access to the means to decrypt codes that wouldn't be practical for anyone else. The question becomes whether it makes any sense to limit most uses of crypto to a level between what is easy, and what the government can decrypt with some effort. They don't seem to be doing too well catching people who aren't using any crypto, so what's the point.

IMHO, the only thing that can be accomplished is to hurt commerce and individual privacy. It is often just a matter of setting parameters to set the length of keys and such, and they are going to make companies who do anything with encryption do extra paperwork and such to track it. And god forbid you want to user GnuPG for anything. I'm sure they want to outlaw that completely.

Impact upon Palladium / DRM in hardware

[bloo9298]

Hey, if Freeh managed to get a law enforcement backdoor into every crypto device and it applied to Palladium and other DRM systems implemented in hardware, then those systems would be considerably more vulnerable!

Maybe Freeh isn't so bad after all. :-)

Ask Security Services to deny this

[Garry Anderson]

I have posted similar comment a couple of times before - the logic is undeniable. Nobody has ever gave reasoned argument against it:

Ask Security Services in the US, UK or Indonesia (Bali) to deny this:

Internet surveillance, using Echelon, Carnivore or back doors in encryption, will not stop terrorists communicating by other means - most especially face to face or personal courier.

Terrorists will have to do that, or they will be caught.

Perhaps using mobile when absolutely essential, saying - Meet you in the pub Monday (human bomb to target A), or Tuesday (target B) or Sunday (abort).

The Internet has become a tool for government to snoop on their people - 24/7.

The terrorism argument is a dummy - bull*.

SURVEILLANCE WILL NOT BE ABLE TO STOP TERRORISTS - IT IS SPIN AND PROPAGANDA

This propaganda is for several reasons, including: a) making you feel safer b) that the government are doing something and c) the more malicious motive of privacy invasion.

Government say about surveillance - you've nothing to fear - if you are not breaking the law

This argument is made to pressure people into acquiescence - else appear guilty of hiding something.

It does not address the real reason why they want this information (which they will deny) - they want a surveillance society.

They wish to invade your basic human right to privacy. This is like having somebody watching everything you do - all your personal thoughts, hopes and fears will be open to them.

This is everything - including phone calls and interactive TV. Quote from CNET: "Whether you're just accessing a Web site, placing a phone call, watching TV or developing a Web service, sometime in the not to distant future, virtually all such transactions will converge around Internet protocols."

All your finances for them to scrutinize - heaven help you if you cannot account for every cent when they check on your taxes.

Do not believe the LIES of Government - even more of your money spent on these measures will not protect us from terrorists.

P.S. On the Domain Name System, big business steal words that belong to everybody - abridging what words you can use - violating the First Amendment. Corporations illegally abuse and expand their brand using domain names - above all smaller businesses who use similar words - violating Competition Law.

The authorities LIE - they know how to make these trademark domains unique and totally distinctive, as the LAW requires trademarks to be. They are aiding and abetting the pervertion of Law. Please visit the World Intellectual Piracy Organization - not connected with United Nations WIPO.org !

Can't turn back the clock. :)

[Jonny 290]

I don't give a flying fuck what Louis Freeh urges, says, mandates, preaches, or invokes. I've got PGP, GPG, and several other crypto programs, as well as the full manuals and docs burned to high-quality CD-R in triplicate, stored in three geographically diverse locations.

Try to 'urge' those out of my possession.

Re:Legality

[BitterOak]

For example; personal, non-secret, communication should not be encrypted.

I agree. I've also started flying only in the nude. The fewer clothed passengers there are in airports, the more time security officers can concentrate their searches on those who are potentially hiding something under their clothes.

In other news

[linuxwrangler]

It's a sorry state of affairs when this is one of the more intelligent commentaries on controlling encryption.

too much encryption?

[smartfart]

Actually, if you're going to be serious about encryption, you ought to encrypt everything you send out.

If you encrypt only the sensitive stuff, anyone watching you knows when you do it. If you routinely send encrypted traffic, no one is going to know when one of your messages actually contains something you'd rather not have divulged.

The military does this all the time. They blast all kinds of noise on the band, and only rarely send any actual message, thus keeping their stuff hidden in plain sight.

There was even (in keeping with the latest trend on /.) a science fiction story that used this as a plot vehicle, which told of messages being received from distant planets where usually there was stellar noise. I want to say it was "The Mote in God's Eye", but don't quote me on that.