Slashdot Mirror
EU To Counter Echelon With Quantum Cryptography?
jfruhlinger writes "An article on Security.ITWorld.com seems to outline a coming information arms race. The European Union has decided to respond to the Echelon project by funding research into supposedly unbreakable quantum cryptography that will keep EU data out of Echelon's maw. Leaving aside the question of whether such a thing is possible, the political implications are troubling, indicating a widening rift within the Western world. Interestingly, the UK is part of the EU, but its intelligence services are among Echelon's sponsors."
What I do is send meaningless emails with high encryption to my friends in China. I figure that the NSA may as well spend countless CPU cycles finding out that I just installed the Guild Wars E3 demo rather then on important stuff.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Wouldn't it be a lot easier to just use SSL and/or IPSec with well peer-reviewed algorythms, and H.323 for voice communications so they too can be wrapped in IPSec?
The Whitehouse just issued a press release stating that, "Quantum Mechanics is now officially part of the Axis of Evil".
In other news, a significant minority of people in the EU have already switched to an unbreakable real-time encryption technology, transmissible through the open air. External experts are at a loss; the NSA has made no headway whatsoever against this new threat.
What is it? It goes by the name 'French'...
Do you really think this will be the "end all" solution to privacy? This has been going on forever. Quantum cryptography is incredible, but it's also very new to science. No doubt will there be a counter-measure to quantum cryptography, just as there has been to everything else in the world that people use to try to "keep safe". It's just a matter of time.
Now please excuse me, while I put freakin' laser beams on my freakin' newly purchased sharks freakin' heads.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Interestingly, the UK is part of the EU, but its intelligence services are among Echelon's sponsors.
The UK has its butt sitting on 2 chairs. On one hand they sort of behave like a US state, with Tony as governor, and on the other as a half-willing EU member, in large part thanks to Mrs Thatcher. One of these days they'll have to decide which continent they want to be part of.
And I have a feeling that, if the population has a say, they'll embrace the EU eventually. Of course, the population rarely has a true say in any country though...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
My first thought was "if I was doing something like this I wouldn't say anything on a news site" and my second thought was "oh... they'd know anyway".
One has to wonder why we call it Quantum Encryption when it really has nothing to do with Encryption. From the article:
The aim is to produce a communication system that cannot be intercepted by anyone
If I understand their intent, they plan to use concepts like Quantum Entanglement to ensure that communication is shared only between the entangled particles. This is a very different concept from using the properties of Quantum Mechanics to scramble information in a reversible manner or creating computers capable of super-fast calculations.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
that the US spies on its "friends" in the first place.
It may be naive, but if you want respect you have to give respect.
You used to "worry" about "Big Brother" watching you. Now there will be two "Big Brothers" watching over us at all times. Whew! I feel secure.
If you don't believe me, decode this: 1xQ";
Hint: uncoded it is a full length novel.
If there is a "growing rift" in the Western hemisphere, who the fuck do you think is responsible for this -- the ones who are pissed off about the eavesdropping and are trying to do something to stop it (and think for a moment about the fact that they're trying encryption rather than attempting to convince the US et al. that it's a Bad Thing...what does that tell you about their chances of actually convincing anyone to stop anything?), or the countries and intelligence agencies that decided this was acceptable in the first place?
Sorry for the shouting, but this intellectual coyness does not become you.
Carousel is a lie!
Also, I don't think people realize how strong cryptography is today. There are cryptographic methods available to the public at large (such as RC5 and PGP) that are proven to require more computing power than is theoretically possible in the universe. Not just more computing power than is possible with current hardware, but the theoretical limits of computation given the entire resources of the universe. So really, it seems that a lot of ignorance is at play here, and I would hope someone clueful in the EU informs their EU government before they go off and waste a whole lot of taxpayer money on such a foolish project.
Software piracy is victimless theft.
All the US intelligence services have to do is routinely moniter the lines encrypted with quantum cryptology. Such cryptology would be completely useless in the face of this kind of jamming and the countries would be forced to use standard transmission open to eavesdropping.
Echelon is a monitoring system, not some magical machine from cracking conventional cryptography. No respected researcher believes that the NSA, or any other agency, has the ability to crack secure keys using conventional algorithms (say 128 bit AES combined with 2048 bit RSA).
If the Europeans wanted to really help against this, they should be encouraging the adoption of existing encrypted standards for Internet pipes (TLS, IPsec, etc), email, and especially VOIP (note that SIP is non-authenicated plaintext by default - there is no excuse for that in 2004). Quantum cryptography is a fun theory, but it is completely pointless in practice, since everything it achieves can be done better using conventional mathematical cyptography.
"Not crackable within the age of the universe" is the same as "uncrackable". Could people get over there obsession with the latter word already.
As someone who lives in the UK, I think our stance on this is ridiculous, and a legacy of WW2. We're an important and influential member of the EU, and the last couple of years should have made it obvious that a close relationship with the US damages our relationship with the rest of Europe (and the wider world) and only benefits the Americans. In the post Empire world, Britain's role is as a democratic and decent European nation. We should not support pre-emptive war or the Israeli's mistreatment of the native Palestinians.
Oi, Blair! Sort it out.
Echelon isn't a US project but run by "UKUSA" (a metanational entity comprised of English-speaking countries / the ex-colonies).
That means the biggest "earner" in terms of GDP for the EU - Britain - will actively be working against whatever the collective "agrees" upon. UK is part and parcel of Echelon, and the EU.
Monyk believes there will be a global market of several million users once a workable solution has been developed. A political decision will have to be taken as to who those users will be in order to prevent terrorists and criminals from taking advantage of the completely secure communication network, he said.
And exactly how are they going to tell terrorists from normal workers at a company where they installed this crypto thingy? Of course, the admins could monitor the users, but that would kind of defeat the purpose of the encryption in the first place.
Also, how are they going to implement this? Will they have to replace/addparalell all the current infranetstructure with new photon-cables or something?!
the political implications are troubling, indicating a widening rift within the Western world.
/me thinks the troubeling indicator is the US, UK and others spying on their allies in the first place.
just a thought.
On the face of it its a great idea and one all governments of democratic free countries want to at least pay lip service to if not full blown involvement. The sharing of intel is a mutual benefit to all, fighting crime and terrorism.
But that's not how it works. Who funds all this?
Only partly government funding, lots comes from the commercial sector, and this has been a dreadful mistake, because obviously these people want something in return.
I have heard plenty of stories, and damnit I wish I could find some links now, of how Echelon and other survielence networks are exploited by American corporations with people placed in privilaged positions to give them competetive advantage.
If this stuff was used ONLY by governments, and was truly a shared info and intel resource with every government on an equal footing then it would be commendable. However it's not. The US has abused this joint venture.
Locking out, and getting a semblance of rightful privacy for business is a natural reaction. It's basic network security.
Ronald Reagan, despite what anyone believes about his presidency came up with one good saying regarding communism. Trust - but verify. I more or less trust all our friends in the EU (well, except France). I trust them more when I have gone over all thier top secret communications and I know they aren't planning to nuke me.
Karma: SELECT `karma` FROM `users` WHERE `userid`=138474;
RSA 2048 is pretty much unbreakable, if they really cared so much about Echelon (which IMHO is a disgusting thing), they'd simply make it standard. The main advantage is that minor changes would be required to the existing infrastructure.
The Raven
These people have no idea what security means. Sure, the key is transmitted over a secure link, but "the encrypted data would then be transmitted by normal methods."
Normal methods. Meaning the ciphertext is still prone to interception by Echelon and the resulting analysis by experts. The encryption is only as strong as the cipher used.
The only truly unbreakable cipher is the one-time pad.
In regards the US experience:
WWI - the Belgian mistreatment was deplorable, but what drove the US into this war was the unrestricted submarine warfare and such stupidity as the Zimmermann note. There were no mutual interests really - Wilson tried to be almost quaintly fair in his peace terms which were summarily rejected by the rest of the Allies with their millions of corpses. Wilson came back, had his stroke, and that was it for internationalism in the US. Back to sleep...
WWII - We stayed out of the war for three years. I'm not going to say there was no sympathy for Britain, but there was no desire to get embroiled in a war anywhere. Even the sinking of US ships in the North Atlantic was insufficient: it required the attack at Pearl Harbor to drive us to war. Even then, there was no real solidarity with Europe. There was a job to be done, an danger to be eradicated. We did this, and formed the UN in an attempt to deter future war. Based upon formulae agreed upon at Yalta and elsewhere, we occupied the former Axis and maintained some troop strength there, which would not previously have been a normal American thing to do.
Cold War - The Cold War was once again fed by fear of Soviet aggression rather than any kind of solidarity with Europe. We assumed that fighting the Communists would be better done in Europe than on our own shores.
Now, please note that these events were similarly perceived elsewhere -i'm sure no British patriot thinks that us taking a pass on WWII for 3 years while they got pounded was a good idea, for instance.
My point simply is that US interests are not congruent with those of Europe and very likely never will be. Immediacy of threats has masked this for a long time , but it should not be mistaken. There never has been any kumbaya singing going on at either side of the Atlantic.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
How do we do all these at the same time?
a. bust criminals, terrorists and kiddie porn peddlers?
b. protect the privacy of law-abiding people?
c. make sure that people who invade the privacy of others don't abuse their powers?
Without cracking the Nazi and Japanese encryption, we'd probably have lost WWII.
While I want privacy for all deserving folks, it has probably become impractical given the rise in terrorism.
If we can keep the govt from finding out we're visiting porn sites, then terrorist will also be able to keep their info from the govt too.
What is probably more practical is finding ways to keep people in charge of spying from abusing their power or misusing the information for their own personal gain.
Not sure though because this isn't black-and-white. There are tradeoffs and grey areas.
OK, some quick rules on statecraft.
1. There are no such things as friends. Only allies in a given struggle.
2. The goal of a government is self preservation, not preservation of a given alliance or treaty.
3. The fact that say France and Germany are not the same country should give you an idea that said people's have different ideas on what self preservation means. Therefore on the points of difference there needs to be vigillance.
4. Most governemnts are not moral agents (I can't think of any at this give time, though arguments can me made for theoracies), so don't expect them to act like one.
5. Because of the above there will always be:
5a. Secrets
5b. Worrying about Allies secrets.
Google's gmail supposedly won't be a big snoop because most of the process is automated. Well if you need to find terrorist threats, and the next mass civilian massacre, you have to do some widescale information gathering. It's not like the spooks tell everyone about your dirty little secret anyhow. A lot of it is trivial and mundane BS. Yet nobody wants to give the authorities enough manpower or resources to actually protect us or do their job. Why even bother then. Might makes right I guess.
QC doesn't even prevent a man-in-the-middle attack. All you need to do is splice your tap in to the fibre (or whatever) and do QC with the two ends.
Paul.
You are lost in a twisty maze of little standards, all different.
If conventional encryption and transmission is deemed sufficiently secure for transmitting the messages, a quantum exchange of keys does not add significantly to the security of the communication. It would surely be easier and cheaper to organize physical transfer of one-time pads than to install all the necessary infrastructure to support the key exchange.
The EP were obviously taken in by buzzwords, but at least the research will advance the state of the art.
flossie
Write now. Defend liberty
I predict that within the next 10 years we will be living in a new dream. A nightmare of biometrics and photographic detection. They won't just know what you are saying over the phone, email and teletype. They will know when you jacked off and whether or not you swallowed it.
Economic espionage has caused serious harm to European companies in the past, Monyk said. "With this project we will be making an essential contribution to the economic independence of Europe."
Translated: "with this project, we can bribe third-parties without getting caught."
Or: "with this project, we will re-enable our large European multinational corporations to bribe rich but corrupt third-world governments without having to worry about Echelon-based 'allies' catching us."
(OK OK, don't take my cynical remarks too seriously. But if you haven't read about this angle, it is pretty close to the US position as outlined in this ex-CIA director's remarks on it here and here. Don't forget the ever-needed grain of salt with all things Echelon.)
--LP
If truly unbreakable crypto is ever devised, every government in sight will simply legislate it out of existance via penalties so severe that you won't risk using it.
Dubya-I-N-D-O-W-S XP
i udfhgiufdhguihizghdusghurugfihdsiughsiuhguiy trytreiqifmzml,PLaosjujshnfklsdgoijs dilbvdhboinvkishrdoiiksdjfs jodfgniugkishgdf
bfsjhbdfhsidhfdhikerhfkihreki
hsfdiurhfiuheriughiurehgierhiytiuwejlkjPiefjih
h
yqte
khsgiuhrgiuh
dgbkidfhgiobnvkjdhbiv
Decryption Commencing... Please Wait...
This may take a few minutes....
You may wish to grab a coffee
ERROR! Cannot decrypt!
Bush: Well gosh, I guess them Yuropiens have got Weapons of Mass Distruction!
Bush leaves the office...
Retrying decryption... Decryption complete!
Message reads:
RE: Bush's IQ
From: Tony Blair
To: Paul Martin
Bush really is an idiot, isn't he?
Signed,
Blair
PS: What do you think of the new encryption program we desgined. It is uncrackable!
Although quantum crypto secures the fiber, it does nothing for the equipment on either end. Routers, switches, ISP mail servers, etc. remain accessible.
Until Linksys sells a consumer quantum WAN interface, CISCO sells quantum Layer 3 switches, and all the telcos fiber-up with quantum crypto repeaters, the whole system is vulnerable to snooping.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
True. What would be nice would be undetectable, cheap, point to point, encrypted communications.
Why encrypted, and undetectable? Think of it as a bit of insurance, just in case either one fails.
I believe the answer is "Fahrenheit 451"
The weakness in current encryption/communications systems isn't in the encrypting algorithms, which have withstood the serious efforts of some top-flight mathematicians to bust them. Nor is it necessarily in traffic analysis; keep a line open and transmitting bits 24/7. Isn't hard to design the system so the intended recipient can tell when the "random" bits start a message. Nor is the weakness in key transmission, at least for governments: lots and lots of really long keys can be transported on CDs well in advance of need. The weakness remains where it has been in recent years, with the people using the system, and with keeping their computers out of unauthorized hands. Going to quantum methods doesn't change get around this weakness. From what I see, the benefit of quantum crypto is the ability to make message tampering evident.
Futuristic Photon Cables
here
Does anyone know, with a relative amount of certainty, how easy (or impossible) it is for the government to break standard encryption in use today? For instance, if I encrypt my email in 128-bit encryption, is there any possibilty that the government would be able to break that easily? I know that it its technically possible to break the key by using large number of computers chugging away at the problem, but I don't the government has the time or the resources to do so.
SIGFAULT
"Perhaps, but then again, how many respected Nazi researchers believed that the allies had cracked the Enigma code?"
Down that road, lays madness.
Tony wants to be at the centre of the EU, and so do the Lib Dems. I've no idea what the official Tory line is this week, nor how many of them support it, but there's a very solid majority in the House of Commons pushing a pro-EU agenda.
"RSA 2048 is pretty much unbreakable, if they really cared so much about Echelon (which IMHO is a disgusting thing), they'd simply make it standard."
A disgusting thing in a disgusting world. Help clean up the planet.
Richard Reid was a citizen of the UK, and by most peoples' assessment he attempted to blow up a US bound flight with his fucking shoe. BTW, I hope he gets to see the bottom of a few shoes in prison. He costs air travelers a lot of time since everyone now has to remove their shoes at security checks.
One or more of the 9/11 hijackers entered the US via Canada.
Now UK and Canada aren't specifically to blame, but these situations suggest at least one reason for the US to monitor international communications that go thru the US.
.sigs are for post^Hers.
I agree. It ought to be called Quantum Intrusion Detection, because that's what it is. It doesn't encrypt, nor does it protect anybody from intercepting the message.
All it can do is tell you if your message is being intercepted. Now, this is useful information, since you might decide to quickly stop transmitting, and if you're fast enough on the draw and using conventional encryption on top of your Quantum Intrusion Detection, then you'll probably not give enough data to the intruder for them to feasibly decrypt anything.
But note that if you want the protection of encryption so the intruder doesn't get plaintext, you still need to use conventional encryption.
Also note that some wild-eyed Slashdot types who's understanding of technology is buzzword-deep sometimes make the claim that Quantum Computing might crack Quantum Encryption. Nope, because "Encryption" isn't. And the very nature of the Intrusion Detection is that you can't get around it, no matter how clever you are.
The worst part of this stupid naming is that some day we probably really will have some sort of encryption that uses QM, and then what we will call that?
Anyways, it is apparently far too late to do anything about this misnomer, but it's one of the most pernicious misnomers I've seen in modern times. Whoever named this technology should have their relevant degrees stripped.
First, why single out the US? Echelon is an agreement between the USA, United Kingdom, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand. Every participating member spies on another, using the common system, and then the intelligence agencies share the data.
Second, the main point of Echelon is for each country to be able to spy on itself, not other countries. It is a hot-potato arrangement of English speaking intelligence agencies which subverts individual national prohibitions against domestic spying.
Doesn't automatic keying of IPSec connections work transparently? Couldn't you auto-key with any host with a certificate signed by a valid (for some definition of valid) certificate authority?
If a country were serious about encryption they'd make the Bar Association, College of Physicians, etc signing authorities for their members, and College of Notaries Public signing authorities for the public and corporate entities.
I'd much rather have host-to-host encryption on my medical or financial records than network-to-network encryption. Having EVERYTHING encrypted this way makes it much harder for echelon to know what to concentrate on. It also prevents the information from being easily siphoned within the network before it reaches the Quantum link.
If it is commonplace for all communications to be encrypted with IPSec, how can the masters of echelon know which connections between two high-volume mail servers or H.323 gatekeepers to snoop on?
Baring science-fiction quantum factoring, Standard high-grade IPSec should protect communications long enough for negotiations to complete. The thing the EU is worried about (If you've read the EU parlaimentary report on Echelon) is that it's used to pass information about ongoing commercial negotiations to american companies. The key thing about this (and most other things that are encrypted) is that it's the TIMING of the information being disclosed that's important.
How is the Grandparent post a troll? I posted AC because I'm at work.
And you know this because you've studied history. The fact that most people get theirs from the mass media and bad schools bodes ill for the US. No educated public, no republic. Bye, bye.
He he! I like your spin. I was going to write a comment quoting from the same ex-CIA director, said quotation having been made before the Enron and WorldCom scandals. You've chosen to spin it the other way from the obvious way I was going to take!
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
And where has it been shown that this is the price you have to pay? Sorry, but it's not that easy. Stopping the planes crashing means a) using the information you have about your enemies, and b) understanding who they are, what their motives are, and how to cut their support.
Please explain how letting Ashcroft read your emails to your girlfriend/mom/dog achieves either of these goals?
Quantum cryptography has a cool name, but in practice, it sucks, at least its current implementations. It's not end-to-end by design (you can't have a direct fiber to everyone you want to communicate with these days, after all), and so it's easily regulated. It's expensive. It doesn't solve key management problems, and the installations that have been publicly described so far are extremely vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks.
If I believed in conspiracy theories, I'd say that the NSA is luring the EU towards unavailable and untested quantum cryptography, and away from commercially available, tested, reliable and rather secure conventional crypto products. Actually, the quantum crypto recommendation (whether it's contained in some EU documents or not) is the result of a pretty slick PR (and lobbying) campaign.
It's not the encryption per se that use quantum mechanics.
:
But the un-interceptable channel produced by quantum mechanics is used to exchange the encryption keys used in the encryption itself.
So, YES, the quantum mechanics are used in encryption.
Research is currently done on this subject here in switzerland
Principle
- according to quantum mechanics, you cannot split light in smaller element than photons.
- Quantum encryption transmits information (keys) using one single photon at a time (per bit of information).
- If any one attemps to steal the information, they'll "eat" the photon (no way to split photo. Either they go to receiver, or they go to the spy, they cannot go to both place at the same time), and the photon will be lost, just like it happens with other transmission errors.
- Using some error correction-like method both receiver and sender agrees which bits aren't lost and will be used.
- It doesn't matter whether the lost bit where lost due to poor quality of transmission or because of a spy listening : they won't be used any way.
- The "error correction-like" (= agreeing which photon they'll use) can be done on a basic non encrypted channel. Even if the spy get this information, it doesn't help him : because they'll agree on photon that arrived correctly, i.e.: photons the spy hasn't captured. All other photon he did manage to capture will be discarded.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Go check out the Echelon site and you'll notice quite a few other "security systems" working in the best interest of their own countrie(s).
It's not like the U.S. is the only country out there sifting through all the digital noise.
It just happens to have the biggest sifter.
C
"There might even be polynomial algorithms for it, taking advantage of mathematical properties that only the largest employer of mathematicians in the [free] world knows about."
If you believe in this Echelon thing you will be considered dangerous. Take off those shades and turn in! It's for your own good. T.V. is your friend.
Echelon could have already been countered by Microsoft, but just like with VB-script worms and pop-up windows (which could also have been prevented) they didnt. I dont know if its stupidity or something else going on, but given the market share of Outlook if microsoft implemented encryption by default (could even be weak and tied to your current password) Echelon wouldnt have a hope in hell of decrypting everything for a keyword flagging, they might just manage a few choice emails that they were already watching and only if they stuck a good chunk of processing resources on it. You dont need very strong crypto, you just need everyone to be doing it.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
THERE IS NO OTHER NEWS!
... and it scares me to know that I'm the one opening their eyes to this.
Anyone else notice that no one in the U.S. of A knows what Echelon is? I've asked co-worker after co-worker, relative after relativc, friend after friend
What is this 10 years now that I've been raving about it. And not once EVER has there been at least a little 15 second side spot , or ticker note at the bottom about Echelon.
Love my Country:Fear my Government
*DrugCheese rants*
Do you really think you are being that much more eloquent by using the word "fuck" in italics? If you where really that eloquent, you wouldn't need to use the word "fuck" in italics.
Sound and truthful post sir. But entertain for a moment
:)
1) making real friends instead of exploiting short term partnerships of convenience.
2) Preserving ideals, standards of living and freedoms instead of what is after all only a transient 4 year blip in history.
3) Normalising our differences so that vigilance is no longer required.
4) Introducing the concept of morality and ethics back into government.
5) Because of which we might have:
5a) No secrets
5b) a better world to live in.
...and what they say about internet is true. This would make the US government the world's largest store house of porn?
And phone sex too I guess.
No wonder they want to keep things quiet. Talk about a hacker's honey pot.
Chew: You Nexus, huh? I design your eyes.
Roy: Chew, if only you could see what I've seen with your eyes.
Come on... and the american where not supplying the Talibans to help fight the russian's, when it was convenient ?
All countries, may they be US, France, UK, China, Russia, Germany, Italy benefit from selling weapons... this is not going to change soon... country 1 sells to team 1, five years later country 2 sells to team 2.
I stopped wondering where all the anti-personel mines used through out sectors in Asia and Africa came from...
Everyone--from good hearted people to downright argumentative trolls--misses the point on spying.
I don't care about online privacy. I'm not worried about government spooks sifting through my e-mail or web surfing habits and finding out that I like brunettes with long legs, long hair, and almond shaped eyes. It really doesn't concern me. If it were some supercomputer sitting in a back room chewing through e-mail looking for "homicide, suicide, terror, assassinate, secret, password, 9/11" or some other stupid set of keywords or tracing kiddie porn that'd be fine by me. At least until the anti-pr0n people decide that moral righteousness has no bounds and start coming after willing adults with no real sex life and a speedy net connection.
Face it. We live in the real world. People in power let it go to their heads and they often use it for purposes other than those in which it was given to them for.
What I'm worried about is that the guy down the block is an FBI agent. Or CIA. Or NSA. Or some local politician who knows one. One day I'm walking down the street and a candy wrapper drops out of my pocket onto his lawn. Now this guy is such a straight laced Bible thumping tight a__ POS that he uses his political muscle to find out who I am and begin harassing me. "He dropped a candy wrapper on my lawn! He's a litterer! He's no good for society! Besides, I saw him carrying home a six-pack of beer! He must be an alcoholic as well!"
Where's the check and balance? There is none. Who could prove it? No one. Who can stop it? No one.
Echelon, Big Brother surveillance, the Anti-Terror bill. They all suck for the same reason that the Windows registry sucks: there's no way to secure them from people misusing them to hijack the system.
+++ATHZ 99:5:80
In reply to your point 3...
Switzerland... 703 years of existance (1291), with four different type of mentality and languagues. Nobody said it was easy and there are still differences...
~58 years a non-UN member... so it's probably stoll going to take a while for switzerland to join the EU.
Mrs Thatcher was distinctly anti-Euro, apart from free trade and good relations which follows the last referendum the UK had. It was the Major years (Maastricht treaty and in then out of the ERM) followed by Blair who pursued the closer ties.
Despite being promised a referendum on the EU constitution (which is a woeful hack of previous revisions), the British public hasn't been given a date on it... and the trust (read as 'lack of') I have in Blair is as such that he would do the referendum after the point of no return (sorry people if you voted 'no', it's too late now!).
I for one would like the closer ties with Europe (i.e. what we have now), but what is proposed I think is too much too soon... and there are too many problems which really need sorting first (red tape, beaurocracy, politicians voting in new laws when they have no clue as to what they are, etc etc). Added to that the majority of the British public need to know exactly what is going on, and what will happen before we're even semi happy with it.
I've always been of liberal views and what you would call a floating voter, but I wouldn't trust the Lib Dems (almost wanting to powershare with Labour, no real manifesto), I definately don't trust Blair.... but despite his previous convictions I think the Conservatives are in a much stronger position with Howard (especially regarding party unity).
Maybe the biggest problem that'll hit us in a couple of years is the national debt (where the conservatives saved a crap load of money by taxing the country half to death - mind Labour were happy to add to that) and the housing prices/issues, add to that the amount of money being literally thrown at the NHS is a nice little ticking time bomb that I'm not looking forward to going off.
Anyway, most opinion/info in this post is AFAIK and is open to correction/counter viewpoints... as they say (damn this zippy led US keyboard), just my 0.02 UK Sterling (yes I do know about character map, I just can't be arsed!).T-Kir
Are you local? There's nothing for you here!
Every country with any capability at all has done this for all of recorded history.
The US spies on everyone because it has the technical means to do so. The USSR/Russia does it, France, the UK, everyone does it. It is sometimes used to feed information to big businesses (by all countries!).
Just realize that by and large, everyone reading this story lives in a country that does it, and that every country WOULD do it if they had the resources.
The strong do what they can, while the weak suffer what they must.
There are two fantastic well-researched books that anyone who wishes to truely understand Echelon needs to read:
Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency" by James Bamford is a fantastic history of the NSA from the end of WWII to the present. If you read this book you will see that the idea that the NSA is spying on UN delegations is really a given...in fact one of the primary reasons the US wanted the UN to locate in NYC is to allow easy interception of diplomatic communications. This author uncovered many amazing Cold War programs and anticdotes and presents them in fascinating form.
The second book is "Blind Mans Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage"
by Sherry Sontag, another fantastic book of solid research and good story telling, a large amount of it revolving around underwater communication wiretap activities. The special mission nuclear submarine SSN-21 USS Jimmy Carter is out there specially equipped for undersea cable tapping operations and receiving commendations in the tradition of the Cold War era USS Halibut.
Whatever you think of the ethics of these issues, the technology and history is amazing, and the capabilities do exist and are fairly well documented. If you read these two books, and have the technological understanding to extrapolate a bit, you can get a pretty good picture of current capabilities and the culture of how these collection assets are being used. One thing you will find that they are not being used without limits and elements of responsibility, although there are cases (like the Boeing/Airbus bidding incident) where they have been abused.
-braddock gaskill
Widening the rift between covert collusion in transnational organizations is good for everyone (except the inhuman spooks who sell us out for each other). A constructive EU/US competition will keep us all freer, fighting to attract the more mobile and constructive elements of one another's populations with offers of better lives.
"Good fences make good neighbors."
- Robert Frost, "Mending Wall"
--
make install -not war
> the political implications are troubling, indicating a widening rift within the Western world. I don't find it troubling at all. Individually, I'm more likely to like an American than I am to like someone of my own nationality. As a nation.. well, I wish the Atlantic was wider.
I've heard from a tipsy government employee that PGP type codes are broken in almost real time.
When quizzed later he/she denied it, meaning that its probably true.
Even if they had a note from Al Kayda telling them when they plan to attack, the FBI would fuck it up anyway. I mean, they essentially had the info lat time, and based on various newspapaer articles, things are just as bad as they were 4 years ago.
I admire what the guy is doing.
Actually it's the other way around: You CANNOT build 'quantum' repeaters, and switches/routers would be pretty hard without being able to read the stream(reading it would change the data inside the stream, which is a big no-no).
You may be right, but CANNOT is pretty strong language. I can see that one cannot "read" the data without collapsing the wavefunction, but I wonder if one cannot create further entanglements that copy the information or otherwise permit manipulation of the data streams inside a sealed Schroedinger box.
This means it's a point-to-point solution without any intermediaries. Only the receiver's hardware can read the quantum channel. So no, the quantum channel is not vulnerable to snooping at all.
This is why quantum encryption is useless. It only works if both the sender and the recipient happen to have a dedicated quantum-fiber hardline between them. With no way to switch or route a connection, the system needs O(N^2) lines that connect every possible sender to every possible recipient.
Remember that only the key is exchange on the quantum channel, the rest is done over normal classical channels.
Hmmmm.. . I'm now imagining a franchise retail operation (McQuantalds? PhotonBucks?) that lets two people exchange private keys that they then use for communications on the normal internet. A limited number of franchise outlets could maintain a full complement of secure connections to other outlets.
Yet the system is still vulnerable at the edges. Anything between the magic quantum modem (an entangler/de-entangler or enden?) and the user is the weak link -- being vulnerable to all manner of attacks and snooping (keyboard loggers, backdoors, etc.). The quantum stuff only secures a fraction of the channel.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
but there is an incredible amount of information that will still be passed along by ordinary channels for many years to come. Something as simple as a scientist emailing his parents can tell you what where he is, so unless all personal data is encrypted as well it will only slow the spread of secrets.
Once quantum encryption is rolled out for the average person it might limit the spread of secret information, but of course it may be that camcorders the size of an insect will be in use, and data can't be encrypted when a person reads it. They already have devices that can read the keypresses on a keyboard and the text on a screen by the reflection from a wall (the scan line flicker of light and dark is too quick to catch for the human eye, but can be read by sophisticated electronics). A few more years and they are as likely to be commonplace as quantum encryption.
of QC, is that you can jam the transmission by just looking at it? ;P
I know you are psychotic, but please make an effort.
Despite claims from both sides to the contrary, both sides of the Atlantic are quite similar, imho.
--
Given enough personal experience, all stereotypes are shallow.
I wonder at what point the offical statement will just be 'you cant use strong encryption'. And 'if we catch you, your packets will be dropped and you will be arrested'.
if you cant send your data, who cares how 'safe' it is.
And if they dont even bother to read it before they come get you, its sort of relative how secure the transmission was...
It may not be practical to enforce this, but that has not stopped congress from passing similar laws in the past.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
"The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB" is an excellent book detailing the KGB side of espionage. The co-author was a KGB agent for 40 years in charge of archiving the documents of the Foreign Intelligence Directorate. He defected in 1992 bringings 10,000+ pages of documents with him. The book details Soviet intelligence operations from the revolution through the Gorbechev era and it quite stunning in the depth and expertise of the Soviet intelligence system. And some humor too. For example, they were estimating 2 billion rubles a year were being pumped into their economy through industrial espionage but had to tiptoe around when asked to explain to their superiors why the "superior" Soviet economic system couldn't keep up with the West.
"Trying is only the first step towards failure." - Homer
I'll leave you with a footnote. IBM back in the 1990's came out with an "unbreakable cipher". I noticed that they don't make that claim anymore. Wonder why (-:
This is common sense. It's not like the US wouldn't prevent other countries from reading its secret email. Why do you presume that other countries would not have secrets from the US?
Other countries would be insane *not* to attempt to protect their secrets from the most powerful, and arguably, one of the most beligerant of nations on Earth.
At that point they will adopt the euro, which will cause serious reverberations on Wall Street. Remember that the balance of trade deficit in the US can only be sustained as long as capital from Asia and Europe keeps flowing into the US at a rate of $1 B / day. The US ought to create a strategy to hold Britain else a huge amount of British capital is going to flow into European markets when they finally make the sensible choice.. Britain is the largest foreign investor state in the US.
Anyhow such a choice as Emmanuel Todd suggests could crash the dollar, but really it would be only the last straw; the balance of trade deficit will be what crashes the dollar, when they day comes that Frankfurt or Tokyo looks more stable than the US.
"Interestingly, the UK is part of the EU, but its intelligence services are among Echelon's sponsors."
UK backed Bush and they back Echelon...no major logic jump there. People may think membership means playing by the same rules...thats why England/Scotland still have their native currencies and not the Euro I guess...thats why they disagree with half the member states on Iraq...is it right for part of the EU do disagree with other parts of EU or non-EU Europe...why not? Its been happening for a millenia or two...
-- Sig meltdown immine...
OK so far...
This system basically XORs the bits of the message with the bits of a random key whose length equals the length of the message. Because without the key it is impossible to tell if a 0 or a 1 was originally a 0 or a 1 it is unbreakable.
Note to the reader: at this point you don't need to read any further, as this guy obviously doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about.
A XOR is a Vigenere cipher, idiot. This just goes to prove you have absolutely nothing to say here and yet you managed to write five whole paragraphs of utter bullshit. I hope you aren't stealing company time to write this crap.
i dont care what country youre from...thats funny
Sorry, couldn't resist this one :)
Fools ignore complexity; pragmatists suffer it; experts avoid it; geniuses remove it. ~A. Perlis
> employment rates within the UK and the rest of Europe (3% vs 12% approx)
Those numbers are - frankly - nonsense. The real rate is 8.8% in the Euro zone vs. 4.7% in the UK (as of Jan 2004 - http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/41/13/18595359.pdf).
That's still a very large difference - and kudos to the UK for being on the good side of it - but you've inflated the unemployment difference between Britain and the rest of Europe by a factor of two, making it a pretty poor approximation.
That sounds interesting, although somewhat controversial/questionable. Do you have links to demonstrate the hundreds of spies deported per year?
I think this development need not be regarded with any sort of alarmism.
Plays violent online games as: Nerfherder76
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Terrorist.
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Thanks, that is very useful.
I was aware of some of those books, but not all of them. The trouble is that most people pay more attention to the 30-second advertising snippets that Bush pays for than any of those books.
Nobody in America reads anymore.
So let's all start to use encryption, internally and externally, and dump unsafe tools with backdoors (you know what these are)! Also... let's not forget van Eck radiation.
Well, spammers are currently devoting much effort to making their spam look like "interesting" mail. Currently they are working to defeat Baysean filters, but as the antispam filters get more sophisticated so will the spam. When the filters get as sophisticated as Echelon's, and the spammers learn how to get through them, the output of Echelon (passed to its human agents) could be flooded with false positives. Perhaps this spam effect could effectively shut down Echelon.
Leaving aside the question of whether such a thing is possible
Possible? It has been done.
I think the poster is confusing using quantum codes (first demostrated in 1991, currently commercially available) with breaking codes with quantum computers (still hugely theoretical).
This side up.
Since when is it troubling that people want to keep things off from other's eyes? Doesn't everyone want that?
Yep. I too am somewhat alarmed at the immediate opinions expressed of "America" by kids here (Ireland). It's all well and good us University students debating current affairs and bashing US foreign (and domestic) policy, but when enough ill-feeling has spread that those who do not understand or follow all the issues are influenced - it's time to get worried.
As long as things continue as they are going, I'm sorry folks, but the US is going to be less and less respected in Europe. Unfortunately, people will also begin (continue?) to blur the line between the government and people.
In fact, I would be more Anti-American than I am now, were it not for making some American friends last year (during the Iraq invasion of all times!) and going over to the US for the first time to visit.
People will easily forget all the great and wonderful things about the US. Hatred and ill-feeling is much more persuasive.
The US government's direction needs to change. Probably more than just switching to Kerry! (A more democratic voting system would be a good start!)
-- *~()____) This message will self-destruct in 5 seconds...
that the EU starts protecting their citizens
from the heavy hand of the US government.
The good old USA stopped being a representative
democracy in December, 2000, when a coup d'e-tat
by a coalition of neo-conservatives, religious
fundamentalists (including Islamic), certain
energy and defense contractor companies, and a
cliche within the intelligence agencies (the same
one that brought us Iran-Contra Gate) overthrew
the government of/by/and for the people.
It can now be more properly classified as a
national socialist (fascist) oligarchy.
The one that really gets me, though, is when you point out to a person a piece of the un-reported world, (like, say, point up at a nice chemtrail tic-tac-toe display being sprayed overhead), and see the person go through the following series of reactions. .
And you know, fair enough! I don't know what's really going on in the skies, or in the communications system, or anywhere else for that matter. The problem is that the signs and indications of nefarious weird shit are still there and are getting louder all the time. The difference between the two types of people is that some want to know what's really going on in the world and are willing to look and think and discuss and slowly build up a picture of the truth, while others prefer to hide from unsettling thoughts at all cost.
Nobody can force another's eyes open. As much as you might want to share your insights and wonder at the miraculous and startling world unfolding all around us, some people are simply going to prefer their TV reality.
I don't understand it and I find it hard not to grow disrespectful, but I've given up trying to change it. Abandon the fearful and get new friends; that's all you can do.
Best quote: "Those with the courage of a Lion will not have the fate of a Mouse."
-FL
Many of those books really suck, and some of them are actually quite good. The real trouble is that most people do not have the capacity, or even the will, to determine which are which. For example _The secret history of the CIA_ is one of the worst books about the CIA out there. The author not only displays a poor understanding of the intelligence community, he is flat out wrong on many many occasions. Most books about the CIA, and related agencies, contain factual errors, but this book really stands out in this regard.
"the UK is part of the EU, but its intelligence services are among Echelon's sponsors."
It's kind of an open secret that the UK and the US together spy on Europe. In particular, there is evidence that the US used intelligence supplied from UK-based surveillance stations in order to give American companies advantages. One of those stations is at Menwith Hill. Mark Thomas did a stunt by flying over it IIRC in a balloon to see what would happen and had a party too.
Posters recognized by their sig,
Um... the data which was sent before the interception occured was intercepted. That means that information has been leaked. If you can't see why any information leakage is a bad idea, then you are beyond help.
Um, yeah, and you risk compromising the message. Is it worth it?
Conventional symmetric cyphers are weaker than a one-time pad which is provably unbreakable. What is the point of encrypting something perfectly if the key exchange is weaker than the encryption itself?
this was one of the favourite sayings of stalin.
Conservatism: The fear that somewhere, somehow, someone you think is your inferior is being treated as your equal.
It must not be that hard to identify random data as such - there must be a way to "measure" the entropy of data or something...
The EU has learned that an eratic America besotted with dreams of global hegemony isn't to be trusted. It's another lesson G W Bush has taught the world. The US is flakey and a poor ally.
Only boring people are ever bored.
Europeans began to be anti-usgovernement. That's a huge difference. I still like my american friends and amdire the american culture.
So, EU governments want "unbreakable" encryption - this will secure the data in transit. But what good is that, when the endpoints are Exchange servers and Cisco routers (products produced by companies under control of a foreign government).
A few years ago the swedish government went ballistic when they found out that the encryption software they used (to protect the secrecy of internal swedish government documents) was produced by a US company, and someone was kind enough to tell them that since it was a closed source proprietary product, then had no way of knowing that the secrets were in fact kept secret.
Having insecure endpoints make any transport encryption pretty pointless. But I guess this is not something one can expect a politician to understand.
unfortunatly for the USA (and UK) and echelon! France has developped their backbone in a way that when you connect from a IP in France to another IP in France, it's 100% sure that the packet will stay in France and NOT take a route outside of the country, especially the big big router in London. too bad we do not have this in Canada... it's stupid here, sometimes from montréal to montréal, if I traceroute, my packet goes to toronto, chicago, new york, then come back to montreal, silly... so all packets has been sniffed by echelon...
"Science will win because it works." - Stephen Hawking
Also, I have just finished reading: Clash of the Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads and Modernity by Tariq Ali. As John Bradey points out in his review, [http://eserver.org/bs/reviews/2002-8-25-12.56PM.h tml] the book is mistitled as it is really just a history of Islam and Islamic states and how in the post World War I era, the US, Britain, France and Russia have consistently meddled in the islamic world for their own self interest, sometimes working for democracy but often working against it when it seems the democracy will not support Western interests. Quite a good read!
I am now reading the more down to Earth but no less compelling book: The Best Democracy Money Can Buy by Greg Palast, an American BBC reporter. Having finished chapter 1 which describes the 2000 election, I can say that what is presented is truly chilling. Palast presents how Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris succeeded in disenfranchising nearly 90,000 Florida voters by creative databasing, ignoring the mandates of the Florida Supreme Court and by voting machine tampering in predominantly black counties. The writing style is at times sensationalist - Palast would be at home on Geraldo Rivera's show. But when Palast includes his writings, in full, from Salon.com, the Nation, or Mother Jones, he shines. He also includes extensive documentation (although not AS extensive as I would like). Further chapters have titles like:
* The Best Democracy Money Can Buy: The Bushes and the Billionaires Who Love Them
* California Reamin': Deregulation and the Power Pirates
* Sell the Lexus, Burn the Olive Tree: Globalization and its Discontents
* Inside Corporate America
* Pat Robertson, General Pinochet, Pepsi-Cola and the Anti-Christ
* Small Towns, Small Minds
I heartily recommend both books, if you have time to read them. Between the two of them, you will begin to get a very clear picture of the workings of the present administration in Washington. Palast puts it succinctly: There is no right wing conspiracy; it's just opportunism.
>The quantum channel is only used to exchanged a
:/
>randomly generated key that is as long as the
>message.
If you can exchange the one-time pad over the link, why not just send the message over it? After all, you'd know if anyone had managed to intercept a byte.
I'm pretty sure there was a good reason, but unfortunately I can't remember the details from reading 'the code book' a few years ago.
Or should that be Insightful?
WE ARE THE WEAK LINK! with the 9/11 memory in mind, we have found out that using intellingence information, sharing, and then effectively understanding how it relates to national security it is the weakest part of the puzzle. if the bad guys start putting their messages into 'Songs of Allah', our music inclined kids will have a good career in Echelon related technical MP3 file decoding positions.
Funny, but sadly not true ;>m
http://www.snopes.com/humor/jokes/moonshot.ht
You are wrong. Quantum teleportation of photons. You leave the routing information unencrypted - the routers never have to look inside the envelope - and use quantum teleportation to bounce the unread message from router to router.
that really drives the US, especially under the republican governing model. Every state has only 2 Senators, regardless of the number of representatives, though the number of electoral college members would seriously affect things, not to mention the time difference would play havoc with network election coverage :) California and Texas produce almost as much as England does economically, relatively speaking, so perhaps things would not be as off-kilter as you think. I personally would rather see the English monarchy adopt a serious bill of rights and then welcome the colonies back after a brief family spat between cousins. *dons protective flame suit*
BTW how many of those 56 million are now technically 'freely' associated Scotsmen ? Wow that sounds odd, a Scot freely doing anything with an Englishman beside bashing each other with huge pointy objects...
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?