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Australia Admits to sigint
Eater writes "Doubts about Echelon dispelled. "
Hrm... On one level it frightens me to know that this is going on, but on another level I am comforted by the fact that people already suspected it anyway.
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While I'm sure there is some keyword searching being done, I'd be shocked if more thought didn't go into the system.
Surely there's some initial filtering done based on the identity of the sender and receiver-- messages sent between two people with FBI files probably get more scrutiny. Messages that cross national boundaries would also be more suspect, as would be messages the computer couldn't understand.
Assuming a reasonable set of criteria to prioritize messages, reasonable computing power could be brought to bare on "interesting" messages, easily defeating rot13. I'm sure they'd break 40-bit encryption regularly for really interesting messages. At this point, one could also do some interesting things analyzing the words used to try to identify coded messages. Someone from Montana who regularly describes building "watermelon" would likely raise some red flags here.
Of course, with 50 years to develop the system, it's surely smarter than anything we could envision in a few hours...
I've worked in sigint, myself. And I find it hard to believe that a system set up to detect key words and phrases in common internet traffic can be useful enough to justify its cost. Nations and security agencies *know* that internet communications can be intercepted, and so they send messages encrypted or not at all. Corporations are beginning to understand this, also. The only messages that Echelon could usefully intercept are personal communication and the rare 'slip-up' of a corporation or agency.
That being said, I can easily believe that it exists. Slip-ups do happen, and I can see a government betting a few billion dollars on the off chance of finding one. But the most frightening aspect is that the Echelon system is just better suited towards everyday unencrypted communication between private individuals...and thus, whether chartered or not, that's likely how it will be used. Thank you, Orwell.
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
Personally, I do not care too much about what they do for hunting terrorists, because I am not making bombs or selling illegal drugs in my spare time and I do not think that I would get caught for any illegal activities (although I can never be too sure about that).
When they took the 2nd amendment, I was quiet because I didn't own a gun.
When they took the 4th amendment, I was quiet because I didn't deal drugs.
When they took the 5th amendment, I was quiet because I was innocent.
Now they've taken the 1st amendment, and I can't say anything at all.
(With apologies to whoever wrote that that I didn't credit).
You should care how they hunt down terrorists, as those same tactics may be used against you some day. Remember 1984? Well, we may not be there yet, but slowly and surely we're heading there. For every law passed that takes freedom from us for doing something that hurts no one else, the hope of staying free dies a little more. Personally, if this type of thing keeps up (the Australian government doing this will encourage the US government to also) I'm going to gather a bunch of people together and we'll go find an island and start our own country.
When I was able to do my own spam-armoring, you got a chance to email me. Now you can only hope I see your reply.
He wrote a piece for a UK newspaper saying that the ISP Association (ISPA) and the police were holding secret meetings to allow the police to inspect the logs of all UK Net users activity (news pages read/written, Web pages browsed etc). The ISPs were supposedly agreeing to keep logs specially for police use and allow them free access.
Demon (a UK ISP) responded that these meetings were not secret (any one could attend at £60/day), and were primarily concerned with formalising the limits of what the police could ask for, and the evidence that had to be submitted to the ISPs along with the request. A request would have to include prima-facie evidence of a crime, plus supporting details of when and where the electronic side took place. These details would have to match the ISPs logs before any information would be released. The police had asked for wider access, but the ISPs turned them down, citing UK privacy law which makes the ISPs liable for releasing private information to the police without good reason. Many of the police requests (e.g. web browsing logs) were technically infeasible anyway.
Now its possible that Duncan Cambell was right and Demon are spinning a line here. But Demon were the pioneers in the ISP business, and have firmly resisted attempts at censorship (e.g. blocking the porn groups) in the past. And the legal argument about liability checks out. So I'm strongly inclined to trust Demon on this one.
Now DC has moved on to bigger things. He claims there is a whole big sigint organisation dedicated to listening to you. In the referenced article he takes a few quotes from an Australian politician as evidence that he is right. But go back and look at that article. Note what was quoted, and what was written by DC. Big difference.
And the report for the European parliment was ... also written by Duncan Cambell.
Meanwhile a new law to require european ISPs to provide the police with a dedicated line into their systems was passed earlier this week, rammed through the EU Parliament after 10 minutes debate. Fortunately its not binding (the EU Parliament has comparitively little power), but its still worrying. Where is Duncan Cambell when you need him? Quoting Australian politicians in an attempt to play Fox Mulder!
Paul.
You are lost in a twisty maze of little standards, all different.
Y'know, one really shouldn't get one's shorts in a bundle over this. This has been going on ever since the second world war. My father was a grunt technician non-com in the US Army Security Agency when he served in the Army. He couldn't tell me anything really about what they did, saw, or read but he assured me that the "powers that be" were well up on who was saying what to whom all over the world and this was in the 1950s.
What I think FDH Americans (FDH -- Fat, Dumb, and Happy) fail to realize is that national givernments all over the world do this routinely. Spying on one another is a stabilizing factor in international relations. What would have happened between Pakistan and India if India wondered if Pakistan had nuclear weapons? The first-strike temptation might well have become overwhelming.
The process of discovering, keeping, and disclosing secrets is the shadowy part of international politics and diplomacy.
I also know that even back in the 1950's various security agencies (including the domestic FBI) have had broadband recording equipment and they systematically record vast swaths of the RF spectrum for later analysis. Heck, the FCC has vans that do this with the not altogether inimical objective of finding and eliminating what radio amateurs call QRM, man-made radio interference.
In your own neighborhood, I'd be willing to bet, there is at least one person who comes to the window every time there's a loud noise in the street. We love to snoop.
If you want paranoia, consider that intelligence services have to consider whether intercepts are planted to ferret out information sources! The people who work on these things will sometimes weigh the importance of information against the importance of assets in place and might choose NOT to use an intercept.
Consider also that they can figure out a lot just from seeing the number, freqency, and endpoints of indecipherable communications. You can glean information from the pattern of messages, even if you can't read the messages.
I think all of this is necessary. Its part of why, despite a world bristling with weapons of terrifying power, we have gone without a global war for over 50 years.
My concern comes in when governments have this power exclusively. So long as you and I can watch the watchers, I think things are reasonably safe. If the US government succeeds in forcing Clipper and Skipjack on us, I think we have something to worry about.
I think the second amendment should add crypto to the right to bear arms as a defence against tyranny. I'm not a gun not, nor am I a crypto nut, but I think the right needs to be there just in case.
So long as you can secure your communications if you really need to, I think you should accept that they watch everything. Heck, I'm glad they watch everything. I just think I should be able to too.
Finally, I don't think it matters much what the government does or does not want us to have. Computing power is becoming nearly free (Beowulf), cameras, recorders, microphones are becoming ubiquitous. It will not be long before everything has a net address (your car, your home, your wristwatch) and GPS will know where all of them are all the time.
Privacy will cease to exist. In fact, it largely already has. Now I think we need to make sure that everybody knows everything or else it will just be governments and marketers. There's a world I don't want to live in.
If you want some background info on Pine Gap and Alice Springs and the whole UKUSA/SIGINT bit, check out:
The Puzzle Palace : A Report on America's Most Secret Agency, by James Bamford. Its an older book, but you'll learn quite a bit. I actually ended up having a lot more respect for the NSA when I had finished reading the book.
Another book you may want to check out is Pine Gap : Australia and the US Geostationary Signals
Intelligence Satellite Program. It may be harder to find this one. Its ISBN is 0043030025.
You can always look them up on Amazon.com
Here is one URL on Echelon to get you going.
By the way I think its very silly for Australia to openly or honestly admit this stuff in any fashion or form.