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EU To Counter Echelon With Quantum Cryptography?

Posted by simoniker on from the if-it-exists dept.

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."

9 of 465 comments (clear)

  1. What I do is.... by Kenja · · Score: 5, Funny

    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?"
    1. Re:What I do is.... by DynaSoar · · Score: 5, Funny

      "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."

      I often enjoy sending such things are core dumps or font files (or maybe plans for a planet-buster nuke, I fergit) compressed twice using two different out dated compression programs (say, ARC on a PC and then ShrinkIt [NuFX] on an Apple II), strip off the archive ID header, UUencode it, strip off the leading cap M's, cut it in half, paste it second half first into an email, and send it with a subject line with likely Echelon trigger words, adding "PS: Call me for the key to decode this." If encryption is outlawed, only
      a8e3 5m0w s3k1 5d9k
      b7f2 7k1l c9r4 3yr5.

      --
      "I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
    2. Re:What I do is.... by Mazzaroth · · Score: 4, Funny

      I remember using that kind of tactic back then... I was in charge of a research group and we had to produce a huge specification document for friday 17h00. Of course it was not ready on time. So I decided to try something. I first included a few copies of the document (10 or so) in a zip archive, I then encrypted it using PGP, then uuencoded it, performed a shuffling on it and finally zipped-it again and re-PGP it. After removing the heading, I renamed the thing "Spec_1.0.doc" and send it to our customer. Of course we worked all weekend completing the document but at least, it registered, as our contract required, just in time. The customer came back to us one week later saying that they were not able to open the MSWord document. "Oh! (we said), gee! This must be this email thing AGAIN... we've been having this problem lately... let me resend it to you". And I sent the (new, completed and heavily revised) document. The customer were happy because the document were very good, and so were we.

      I think this time-dilatation technique has been called 'Ed's relativistic document delivery' in that company I used to work. I just called it 'creativity by necessity'.

  2. Uh oh... by ryanvm · · Score: 4, Funny

    The Whitehouse just issued a press release stating that, "Quantum Mechanics is now officially part of the Axis of Evil".

    1. Re:Uh oh... by theefer · · Score: 5, Funny

      If you don't consider Quantum Physics evil, you've definitely never been in a technical university.

      --
      theefer
    2. Re:Uh oh... by brain159 · · Score: 4, Funny

      Surely, quantum mechanics might or might not be part of the axis of evil?

  3. Unbeatable Encryption! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    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'...

    1. Re:Unbeatable Encryption! by pipingguy · · Score: 4, Funny



      I remember watching some TV special about the code talkers, and one of the old guys was practically laughing when he was telling his story.

      When NASA was preparing for the Apollo project, they did some astronaut training on a Navajo Indian reservation. One day, a Navajo elder and his son were herding sheep and came across the space crew. The old man, who spoke only Navajo, asked a question which his son translated. "What are these guys in the big suits doing?"

      A member of the crew said they were practicing for their trip to the moon. The old man got all excited and asked if he could send a message to the moon with the astronauts.

      Recognizing a promotional opportunity for the spin-doctors, the NASA folks found a tape recorder. After the old man recorded his message, they asked the son to translate it. He refused.

      So the NASA reps brought the tape to the reservation where the rest of the tribe listened and laughed but refused to translate the elder's message to the moon.

      Finally, the NASA crew called in an official government translator. He reported that the moon message said, "Watch out for these guys; they have come to steal your land."

  4. How it came to pass... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny
    *** Schroder ( ~schroder!blinky@reichstag.de ) has joined #europe
    *** TOPIC: Be nice to the new guys or Ireland will export drunk hooligans to your country!
    <Schroder> Gutentag!
    <Blair> Cheerios, ol' chap!
    <Chirac> Sup?
    <Schroder> What's happening over here?
    <Chirac> Just watching zat goddamn idiot Bush trying to lose a war.
    <Schroder> Ach so...
    *** Bush ( ~bush!dubya@whitehouse.gov ) has joined #europe
    <Bush> I READ THAT, YOU BITCH!!!
    *** Bush has left #europe
    <Schroder> Right, this is getting tiresome...
    <Blair> Fancy a crumpet, anyone?