2002 US Wiretap Report

GMontag writes "Full report:2002 WIRETAP REPORT Administrative Office of the United States Courts Leonidas Ralph Mecham, Director I especially like this part: 'Public Law 106-197 amended 18 U.S.C. 2519(2)(b) to require that reporting should reflect the number of wiretap applications granted for which encryption was encountered and whether such encryption prevented law enforcement officials from obtaining the plain text of communications intercepted pursuant to the court orders. Encryption was reported to have been encountered in 16 wiretaps terminated in 2002 and in 18 wiretaps terminated in calendar year 2001 or earlier but reported for the first time in 2002; however, in none of these cases was encryption reported to have prevented law enforcement officials from obtaining the plain text of communications intercepted.'"

Comments

Public Report

[Jim Buzbee]

Make what you will about this report, but consider this for a moment: In what other country in the world would this report ever see the light of day?

Re:Public Report

[limekiller4]

Jim Buzbee writes:
"Make what you will about this report, but consider this for a moment: In what other country in the world would this report ever see the light of day?"

Oo! I know! A country whose government realized a long time ago that they could fool 99% of the population -- and simultaneously marginlize the remainder as leftists -- by releasing just enough and/or falsified data to make people think this is evidence of an open government?

Am I right? Do I get a lolipop?

Iran-Contra taught me everything I needed to know about the government's willingness to not only lie to the people and Congress itself but to be proud of doing so. For those who don't remember all the details, this was Oliver North being directed by Ronald Reagan to sell arms to Iran (despite a Congressional ban) and using the proceeds to fund the South American Contras (which was also specifically banned by Congress by way of the Boland Amendment). The Contras were fighting the Sandinistas, a democratically-elected government that wasn't kissing our ass).

Don't get me wrong here... I'm not claiming this data is either falsified or incomplete. But claiming that because we've recieved something from the government is prima facie evidence that we have a government that puts us before it's own perceived interests is nothing short of hilarious.

Re:Read carefully

[stratjakt]

Could be a ton of things.

Could be that they got one end of the transmission to roll over on his buddy and hand out the plain text, this seems most likely. All the tough guy criminals squeal like little piggies when a DA starts talking about jail time.

Could be they got the password to decrypt the wiretaps, or the plain text, through normal policework (like a warrant to search the PC). The fact that guy A is talking to known crime figure B is probably enough for such a warrant, regardless of whether its known what they said.

I mean, if somethings encrypted on the wire, then it was plaintext when it went in, and when it came out. I'd think most detectives would try another angle before they sat around trying to brute force decrypt a transmission.

How was the plain text obtained?

[_bug_]

You've got two ends of the pipe where the data winds up as plaintext. If either end was compromised, as would seem to be the case, then there's no need to worry about cracking the ciphertext.

It's not the encryption algorithm or perhaps even the implementation that's weak. It's how the user manages his or her data.

Re:PATRIOT Act and Freedom

[Steve B]

Since the PATRIOT Act was signed into law, how many terrorist attacks have we had? None. Zero.

Homer: Not a bear in sight. The Bear Patrol must be working like a charm.
Lisa: That's specious reasoning, Dad.
Homer: Thank you, dear.
Lisa: By your logic I could claim that this rock keeps tigers away.
Homer: Oh, how does it work?
Lisa: It doesn't work.
Homer: Uh-huh.
Lisa: It's just a stupid rock.
Homer: Uh-huh.
Lisa: But I don't see any tigers around, do you?
Homer: Lisa, I want to buy your rock.

chaffing and winnowing

[stdarg]

Has anybody read about chaffing and winnowing? (http://theory.lcs.mit.edu/~rivest/chaffing.txt) What is its strength compared to normal encryption?

Anyway, the reason I was wondering is all the comments about extracting passwords from people. What would happen if something were encrypted in a way that different passwords revealed different content? It would be trivial with chaffing and winnowing, but I'm sure it could work with other types of encryption.

The key idea is that of plausible deniability. Say you interleave three streams of data: the real stuff, the decoy stuff, and some random garbage to mess with messages sizes. If you can give 'them' the password for the decoy stuff, and it works, aren't you pretty much off the hook?