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Cringely On Electronic Tapping

Posted by michael on from the we-love-you-too-george-dyson dept.

sckienle writes "Robert X. Cringely, the PBS one, has an editorial discussing electronic wire-tapping and the Big Brother concerns. There isn't any new information in the article, but he does a nice summation of the state of law enforcement today. This may be a good article to show your family, friends and congressmen."

5 of 225 comments (clear)

  1. Re:There are others? by hedronist · · Score: 4, Informative

    Yes. Robert X. Cringely was an invented name for a column in InfoWorld (I think). When the guy who was writing the column left the paper after many years, he took the name with him. Lawsuits followed, etc. He ended up reatining use of the name, but so did the paper.

    The "PBS one" is the original RXC.

  2. Re:WASTE, Encryption, Trust by StringBlade · · Score: 4, Informative

    Encryption is already limited by governmental law. I believe 1024-bit encryption is the current limit according to the FCC and other federal bodies. The government doesn't want people to be able to communicate using an encryption algorithm that they cannot already break. IIRC, IBM had developed an incredibly strong encryption mechanism many years ago and were forbidden by the US govenment to implement it without relaxing the strength of they cipher. If I only had a link...

    --
    ...and that's the way the cookie crumbles.
  3. Outdated and Missing Information by Shackleford · · Score: 4, Informative
    From the article: "CALEA represents mid-90s thinking about electronic intelligence, but now we have the Patriot Act that goes so much further. And we have a program at the Defense Advanced Projects Research Agency called Total Information Awareness."

    The article was quite informative, but there are a few problems with it, related to the above quote.

    "Total Information Awareness" has had its name changed to "Terrorist Information Awareness." Cringely gets this fact wrong and so one has to wonder if there are other inaccuracies in it.

    The other problem I have with it is that it mentions the Patriot Act, but doesn't go into much detail about it. It went on for quite a while about CALEA, and understanbly so. But I think that more about the Patriot Act and its implications should have been included.

  4. Re:WASTE, Encryption, Trust by Troed · · Score: 5, Informative

    Lucifer, by IBM. Later known as DES - when the keylength had been lessened but the characteristics of the cipher had been strengthened against differential attacks (then unknown outside the NSA).

    --
    it's in my head
  5. Re:This really isn't anything new ... by Gallowglass · · Score: 4, Informative
    Dang right! Most western police ofrces have an exercise during training where some other police officer comes in and does something loud e.g. points a banana at the instructor and yells "Bang!" After he leaves the rookie cops are to write down what happened. The resulting reports are never consistent across the class or even between individuals.

    The RCMP classes even warn them that this is going to happen so that they will watch carefully. Same results. No one remembers all the details correctly.

    The objective of the exercise is, of course, to let the rookies know just how un-reliable eye wintess testimony is.

    (I recently saw a story on Discovery about memory research that confirms this, but I'm just about to leave work, and I don't want this post to cut into my beer-drinking time ;-)