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Russians Order Mobile Phone Encryption Removed
PenguinRadio writes "The Moscow Times is reporting that Russian security officers (The FSB, formerly the KGB) ordered all mobile phone providers to switch off their encryption systems for 24 hours, so the police could eavesdrop on all calls. An alert, either an exclamation point or an unlocked padlock, was sent to the phones in question. This is the second time such an order was given - the last time was after the hostage crisis involving Chechnya fighters in a Moscow theater. At least the Russian has the courtesy to warn all their phone users that this was going on. Not sure what the standard FBI procedure is on something like this..."
to deny, deny, deny.
...is probably to have every undercover agent in Russia drop what they're doing and man some listening devices. ;)
libertarianswag.com
*Mercury Rising/Consipracy Theory/That horrible movie with Denzel, etc.
The KGB unencrypts YOU!
It kind of concerns me that the encryption isnt hardwired into the phone, and that it can be turned on an off at a whim. I wonder if the russian or US govt's allow the encryption on their stuff be turned off, or is this a lowly citizen thing only.
The only thing GSM encryption prevents is eavesdropping on GSM calls with radio receivers. Law enforcement can still wiretap where the GSM call hits the copper, after all the call has to be decrypted by the phone network.
I don't really see why they'd have to do this, technically.
Perhaps they just wanted to "appease" the public by showing them that they are invading their privacy to search for Chechyen terrorists? After all, this is pretty visible.
I wonder if they care that I'm having a fight with my girlfriend and am calling your wife to make arrangements to stay over tonight.
Game... blouses.
So should we just resort to random police raids? I'm sure they would find plenty of illegal stuff, but at the same time I really don't want some police person coming over to my house when I'm trying to have dinner with my family. This is pretty much the same thing. I don't want to have to worry constantly that I'm doing something slightly illegal and will get in trouble on a technicality.
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Why bother shutting off the encryption? Why not just go the the cell tower and and tap the line? Seems like it would be much easier than trying to pick calls out of the air. If you just disable the encryption, then the police would have to set up their own receiver. Why not just take advantage of receiver that's already available?
Not sure what the standard FBI procedure is on something like this...
Isn't it obvious? They originate the signal from their secret base on the dark side of the moon, route it through ECHELON, then through the chip in your cerebellum, off the relay in the piece of fried chicken you're eating, through your computer just on general principles, then to your cell phone where it summarily cracks the encryption and displays the letters "BB." Then it kills you.
The coolest voice ever.
The same had been done also in St.Petersburg (2nd largest city in Russia). it was not a terrorist attack but rather Bush visit there last May. Security of the summit had been cited as a reason to turn off encryption.
Russian laws require judge approval to eavesdrop on a communication. It is not known if such approvals had been granted in all these three cases.
a) cell phone encryption turns on you! (how appropriate)
/.)
b) cell phone encryption turns you on! (only on
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
I'm quite surprised that they issued a warning to the phones in question.
Doesn't this defeat the purpose of eavesdropping?
As if terrorists would discuss their plans via mobile phones fully knowing that the FSB is listening.
This type of action doesn't seem to serve any purpose other than to: (1) send terrorists scrambling to other forms of communication (land lines, maybe?), (2) cause terrorists to delay their planning by a day, and (3) bring attention to the potential abuse and rile up privacy advocates everywhere.
None of the above seem to accomplish any worthwhile goals for the FSB.
Yes, in the hostage crisis case gain the ability to intercept terrorist communications while the crisis is in progress.
In this case, however, the attacks have already been concluded. Two suicide bombers have taken 14 others with them. I don't think the accomplices are going to be calling the bombers anytime soon.
The FBI procedure might be to use equipment that can crack worthless cellular encryption in real time.
"o one cares about you and your puny little life and conversations. But you would certainly care if someone was planning on blowing up your train station or office building."
I agree with you here. The Gov't isn't going to blackmail you. However, if the gov't can get in, why couldn't somebody else?
I think the privacy moans and groans are overrated, but I did have a nice little scare when the RIAA announced it would start to sue P2P users. I want my privacy to protect myself from them. I'm not worried about the USA knowing about my personal life (they do anyway, duh.), but when encryption is ordered to be turned off, suddenly I'm open to the world.
"Derp de derp."
What carrier lets you have encryption? I don't think it's a law or anything, but I never seen it as a feature for any of the major carriers. I have AT&T and I never saw that on the website... I remember I even tried to turn it on for my phone... it kept beeping at the beginning of the call saying encryption is not on...
I now kinda would like to know what service does let you do it.
No one cares about you and your puny little life and conversations. But you would certainly care if someone was planning on blowing up your train station or office building.
Ever heard of INSLAW?
That's why they do this. To find out who is planning to do bad things that hurt lots of people. They certainly don't care that you are having a fight with your wife and calling your girlfriend to make arrangements to stay over tonight.
You obviously don't get it. You probably never will. Do you pay your bills using postcards? Or do you send in checks using envelopes?
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
NICE troll. I also love how it's moderated "insightful." People are so fucking stupid sometimes.
Let's get cameras put in our houses too. I mean, if you're not doing anything wrong, then who cares? Your life is normal and boring, the FBI won't care about you! So it's all ok! Don't worry your pretty little head about it.
We'll probably see the standard privacy (natural, fundemental, pre-existing) rights vs. untilitarian (what if the terrorists have a nucclear weapon? / are going to kill 10,000 hostages?) posts.
However, I'm just amazed that Russia issued such a warning... unless, as a matter of software determinism, they couldn't turn off the encryption without turning sending the warning.
A bug, or a feature?
Only Women Bleed (Sex, Sharia remix)
Quote: "They certainly don't care that you are having a fight with your wife and calling your girlfriend to make arrangements to stay over tonight."
What if I were some fledging politician rapidly gaining popularity for my almost rabid support for privacy and constitutional rights, young enough to still be idealistic and uncompromised by lobbying?
Then my fight with the wife and subsequent visit to the girlfriend become quite relevant to The Powers That Be (TM).
Don't laugh, this is the kind of stuff the FBI dabbled in under Hoover.
Privacy is privacy. There must be checks and balances to ensure that powers are not abused. These checks now do not seem to be sufficient (or existent, in some cases).
There's a reason we call it "erosion" of rights. It's a slow, insidious process - but that doesn't make it any less threatening.
At the risk of sound trite, the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.
I hope Ashcroft doesn't get any ideas from this. We may wind up getting little text alerts on our cell phones when the Bill Of Rights is, and is not, in affect.
Civil Rights On....Civil Rights Off...Civil Rights On...Civil Rights Off...
As proven by the German CCC
Today they only care if I want to blow up a train station or office building.
Tomorrow they'll care if I plan to murder a single person.
Next week they'll care about rapes.
A month from now it will be any felony.
Next year, if I call up a friend to say I'm running late, but I'll speed a little to make up the time, I'll get a ticket mailed to me.
A generation from now, I'd hate to see what happens to my kids if they decide to make fun of a "Bushism" that the President has said. Its an extremely slippery slope. A police state is not worth the small level of extra security you may (or may not) get.
"At least the Russian has the courtesy to warn all their phone users that this was going on"
Yo Al Qaeda, we'll be listening to your phone calls on September 16th from 4am to 5am. Just FYI, so go about your day as usual.
Just brilliant isn't it? Next we'll be mailing crack houses letters informing them of the raid 3 weeks later.
great! One more blasted feature on my phone the manual probably won't cover or will bury under 50,000 menu options! ... and I bet Tech Support won't know how to enable/disable it either!
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I'm wondering if there's anything proventing the ex-KGB from doing this eavesdropping without doing this type of warning. The interesting thing in this policy is that it lulls people into thinking that they know overtly when they're being monitored, which may keep people from wondering when they maybe monitored covertly i.e. without a friendly reminder.
Matt Fahrenbacher
James Tiberius Kirk: "Spock, the women on your planet are logical. No other planet in the galaxy can make that claim."
Nope. Sorry. I don't care whether or not the government is trying to track me specifically, but frankly, given a chance, I would rather risk a train station exploding than live under a tyranical goverment that does what it pleases, such a government could easily off people at a faster rate than terrorists can and I want those checks and balances IN PLACE.
With what you suggest, I think it the equivalent of federal agents being able to search anyone's house, for any reason at all, without oversight. If they wanted to, I'm sure they can find a lot of stuff to nail you with if your opinions are out of favor with the current administration, say you're a Democrat or Libertarian when there is a Republican in office.
Quite frankly, there was a warrant system for this sort of thing.
I don't care if you think that most everyone leads a boring life. That doesn't matter, what does matter is a goverment that thinking they can barge in everywhere without cause, without due process and quite frankly, possibly humiliate or blackmail anyone they please.
The russian authorities have a law (SORM) which requires any communications provider to have special equipment tapped by FSB. This law is well implemented and therefore FSB has access to all phone conversation regardless of the encryption.
The true purpose of this action is any one of the following in order of highest to lowest probability:
1) Draw public attention to the bombing/terrorist act and drum up support for whatever it is the government is planning next. Good way to do it as anyone and their dog carries a cell phone. Bad way to really tap conversations since now everyone knows they are being tapped.
2) Draw a lot of attention to current interior minister Gryzlov and his tough and honest men tactics (that and the current cleaning of "dishonest" policement from less important police units). He's probably getting promoted to
head up some political party so that will help.
3) Put the terrorists/chechens/whoever on the run - scare them etc. This sure is a big dynamite in a small pond though - so i doubt it.
4) Have other units not equipped with SORM uplink do the tapping, using scanners or some such. Unlikely since GSM even when unencrypted still can't be listened in on without expensive equipment. I doubt this one even more, but i had to put it here for the sake of balanced options:)
Right. And you are one of those loonies that send all their mail in postcards and cares not about privacy. Good for you.
Problem though is, if and when goverment officials have access, they (some of them) will use it. For their main job, perhaps; for their entertainment, certainly, for other enterprises, quite possibly. Not just to listen to "really really bad guys", but gradually smaller fish, down to figuring out if their wifes are cheating them, or what their neighbours are talking about. Or for more enterprenially oriented peons, ways to blackmail people, or to get to some other useful information; be it for job or for personal businesses.
Never underestimate possibilities that open, or blindly assume everyone uses those powers responsibly. Grow up, use your brains, learn more about basic human nature, and corruption power causes.
I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization -- Oliver Wendell Holmes
By announcing publicly that they're going to be tapping everyone's cellphone for the next day or two, they will have denied Al-Queda or whomever it is they are worried about the ability to make secure phonecalls. So maybe, if the organisation was about to pull a terrorist attack, they wouldn't be able to coordinate their actions and would have to abandon the attack. Alternatively, maybe the point of the exercise is that the people of concern would be forced to use alternative, more vulnerable means of communication (landlines or face-to-face meetings).
What do you guys think?
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
1998 called, it wants its cell phone back.
Modern (digital) cellphones cannot be tapped with a radio. You are the weakest link, goodbye.
That my phone has the ability to work in encrypted and non-encrypted mode? Does the phone automatically join the non-encrypted session without warning, or will it balk?
Really, it would be a good idea to have some sort of *privacy off* icon or something like that on most phones (I think some Nokias I've seen have this).
U.S. law enforcement agencies and the TLAs do not want cellular users to have ubiquitous encryption.
Warrants? Warrants? We don't need no stinking warrants!
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Yeah, I just read an article by John Dvorak that claimed that the whole stink with the RIAA is making privacy and anonimity forefront issues for many internet users. He says that all this is only going to make it harder for the RIAA/government to catch downloaders, and it will aid in things like child porn rings and ... I dunno I forget his other examples ;].
It's a good article, check it out Not sure if /. already posted it, but its relevant and worth it.
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The Supreme Court is taking care of that....
This post was brought to you by the number 584811 and the characters / and .
So that's what the exclamation and unlocked padlock symbols mean. Whenever I go to China my phones always show those symbols and no one knows what they meant. I guess someone's eavesdropping.
> the Russian FSB (Front Side Bus?) FedeRAL'naya SLUzhba BezopPASnosty -- Federal Service [of] Security, is what it stands for, I have capitalized the syllables for stress, the "L" in Federal'naya is followed by an apostrophe to signify palatalization, like the first "n" in canyon. The FSB is analogous to the Department of Homeland Security, in that it oversees all national-level security operations. It does not stand for Front Side Bus.
Can *you* prove that *you* don't have weapons of mass destruction?
the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.
Unfortunately for us a majority of the population is not willing to pay that price.
But I agree. What's the point of having laws if you have no freedom to begin with?
Laws are made to limit freedom to keep everyone safe. But some people believe that its okay to make laws saying I can't drive my car or fly in a plane because its possible for that car or plane to crash into them. Those people are dumb. That's why natural section exists.
Unfortunately we've overgrown nature's laws and seem to think we're smart enough to write our own. And now look at the results. Just brilliant.
What we obtain too cheap we esteem too lightly. It would be strange indeed if so celestial a thing as freedom should not be highly rated. -Thomas Paine
while (!sleep){
sheep++;
}
" So should we just resort to random police raids?"
But why stop there? Such a half-ass effort will surely miss far too much illegality. The only good solution is to have daily (or even more often) police inspections of every home, office, person, vehicle, etc. And just as an added precaution, we should install video cameras on every street, in every ally, and in every room of every home, office, or other such structure. From there, all the visual information could be fed into a lovely Oracle database, having been sorted by an advanced AI system. That way, any and all illegal acts are caught on tape, and the law-breaker can simply be put in jail, or perhaps even more simply, to death. Since we have it right on tape, there's obviously no need for a trial. And since those who break the law deserve to be caught and punished, no one should have any problem with this. After all, you're not doing anything illegal, immoral, or undesirable, right?
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
At least the Russian has the courtesy to warn all their phone users that this was going on
No courtesy or warning is needed. GSM handsets automatically display the no-encryption icon when OTA (Over The Air) security is turned off by the operator.
V
There are two versions of A5: with full 64bit (for US, Germany etc) key and 54bit key (For Russia, Latvia, China etc).
Two months ago I requested my GSM company about their encryption technology. They replied: "Yes, we use good encryption. No, we cannot tell you which exactly".
Try to ask your GSM operator.
The situation is quite the same here in Estonia, the unwilling former Soviet republic. All three GSM operators are required by law to provide equipment that allows the defence police to tap into any phonecall. Until recently this was simply a legal requirement, but at this point all three (if I'm not mistaken) have actually purchased and set up these systems. The legal side of listening to a specific phonecall is a completely separate matter.
I'm sitting just now in my office in the center
of Moscow, and my phone doesn't display "No encryption" alert. It was so during Nord-Ost musicle hijacking, but not now.
BTW, it is not very comforting to think that
somebody in the same bus with you might carry
2 kilo TNT bomb, which would explode when somebody
send SMS to it.
Latest bomb in Moscow was apparently done
via some remotely controlled ignition and
explode when they tried deactivate it.
They didn't shut down the phone system, just the encryption!
The 'standard FBI procedure' would probably be the same, but without letting anybody know. So nobody would riot - most of the people wouldn't even notice the encryption shut off.
There are sites in Russia, like compromat.ru or flb.ru which regularly post transcripts of mobile phone calls between famous people. I have been able to follow the progress of friends/former colleagues in this way, and it's quite amusing. What is not amusing is the ease with which those calls can be tapped, even with encoding switched on. As the poster above says, someone is getting access to the signal after the tower, probably via a direct feed to the mobile operator's exchange.
In the case of those sites above, the tapping is done by various private security services, or maybe by the official security services, moonlighting on behalf of private firms. The output is then leaked to the press, via clearinghouse sites like the ones above, as part of various political/economic squabbles that define the Russian political landscape. The operators have to comply, as the security services are close to the Ministry of Communications, and if you start bleating about civil rights or due process, the Ministry will rapidly discover an irregularity in your license, and make your life hell. In any case, it's not hard for the Russian security services to get a court order, which would force the operator to give access.
So why switch off encoding, when you can get access to the conversations without it? It may be a timing thing, as you say - it may take time to set up a tap for a particular number. Or more likely, you don't know the number that you are trying to tap (it's very easy to get a prepaid SIM card, or to steal one) so you aim to find your target by eavesdropping. If you are looking to tap the phone of a senior politician or businessman, you already know the number you are tapping, so you don't need to go after their signal.
Wasn't a main point of the PATRIOT act that providers of any communications couldn't notify the suspect if eavesdropping was occuring? Turning off encryption would be as good as admitting that, so it's probably illegal to notify.
Funny, this reminds me of a joke that a Russian friend told me...
:)
Both of us are of the age that we grew up during the Cold War and remember what it was like having nukes pointed at each other day and night...
Anyway, we were on the phone and the connection was really bad. At one point, we heard a click similar to someone picking up the phone. So, Dmitri paused and said, "Wait a second..." After a few seconds, he began to speak again and I asked what had happened. He explained that, in Russian, it is considered polite to pause the conversation when you hear the FSB changing the tapes recording your conversation.
I laughed my ass off.... Yes, people, I'm now ass-less....
"Ahhhh, best laid plans of mice and men... and Cookie Monster." -- Cookie Monster, Sesame Street
I just picked up an LG VX10 yesterday, it's a great phone with killer reception - but i didn't know it was possible to build as totally non-intuitive and confusing a UI as it has (and i'm technologically proficent!)
Yes, it's mad offtopic, forgive me, it's early still..
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
Not sure what the standard FBI procedure is on something like this...
Damn Russians. If they lived in the USA they would be treated with the respect and courtesy a country full of apathetic weekend patriots deserves. None. Our government would do something like play up the effectiveness of the crypto in protecting personal conversations and important business secrets on one hand, while ordering a no-warrant backdoor into the system with the other. Of course these secrets would become public in 20 or so years in the name of "full disclosure" to give everyone a woody about their current administration, and the typical American would fail to see how those lies of the past would have any relevance in his life that present day. Stupid Russians.. I bet they wish they were free (to be played like puppets) like us.
in soviet russia, the FSB encrypts you!
actually... that's right according to the article:)
But they kind of GRU on me.
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
This document will tell you exactly what procedure is for wiretap.
It also lists that: "In 2002, no federal wiretap reports indicated that encryption was encountered. State and local jurisdictions reported that encryption was encountered in 16 wiretaps terminated 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. In addition, state and local jurisdictions reported that encryption was encountered in 18 wiretaps that were terminated in calendar year 2001 or earlier, but were reported for the first time in 2002; in none of these cases did encryption prevent access to the plain text of communications intercepted.
"Want in one hand and spit in the other and see which one fills up first." - My Dad
There is no need to turn off the encryption to listen in on calls. They can just use the Lawful Intercept feature which is a built-in in all mobile phone networks. All they need (in most countries) is a court order to enable it. I appreciate that turning off encryption on all calls would enable them to listen in to the calls much more easily, but honestly, how much manpower have they allocated to deal with the tapping of all these phones in that 24 hour window? Do they REALLY believe that this aids them in their investigative efforts?
--Not sure what the standard FBI procedure is on something like this..." --
They use something called the "Mushroom Treatment". The axiom states, "Keep the public in the dark and feed them full of BS".
Then if the sh*t hits the fan, so to speak, the FBI falls back on denial.