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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
This is the one time when I think Soviet Russia jokes are on topic.
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.
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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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 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
The session key used by the A5 cipher in the GSM standard is 64 bits. Interestingly, ten of those bits are not used. Suspicious people have claimed that the key length was reduced to facilitate eavesdropping. Carriers hotly deny this (http://jya.com/gsm042098.txt).
Looking at it from first principles, there'd be little reason to disable encryption for a single user. Law enforcement could tap the phone network downstream of the tower, and intelligence services would want to listen to everybody. (I'm speculating 'cause I don't know).
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?)
They didn't really "issue" a warning. They turned off the encyrption - making the antenea act like it wasn't capable of performing encyrption. Then all of the phones, noticing they don't have their normal encyrption, just added one more icon to the screen.
They only issued a warning in the sense that Iowa issues a warning to all cell phone users that you are currently roaming. It's a function of the phone, not the KGB.
tbdean
The clipper chip was most assuredly implemented. In fact, Clipper chips sold more PCMCIA interfaces for desktop computers than just about any other application. Clipper chips were sealed modules, and PCMCIA seemed like the best way to package them.
Interestingly, there was an attack for the Clipper chip which would let you encrypt your messages such that they would appear to be decryptable by the government, but if they tried to decrypt them they'd fail.
Clipper worked as well as having government agents dressed in nazi-esque outfits in locksmith stores asking for voluntary copies of your house keys would work. That's to say, government agencies used it, but nobody else.
" 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."