[5052] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Crypto and the "Drug War"...
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jay D. Dyson)
Fri Jul 2 16:42:16 1999
Date: Fri, 2 Jul 1999 13:10:01 -0700 (PDT)
From: "Jay D. Dyson" <jdyson@techreports.jpl.nasa.gov>
To: Cryptography List <cryptography@c2.net>
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Courtesy of Politech.
Call me silly, but isn't the l0pht breaking Microsoft "encryption" left
and right these days? Hasn't law enforcement heard of them?
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Date: Fri, 02 Jul 1999 12:58:46 -0400
From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
To: politech@vorlon.mit.edu
Subject: FC: The Crypto Restriction Lobby's new friend
<snip>
The New York Post
June 28, 1999, Monday
Pg. 033
BILL GATES VS. THE DRUG WAR?
By Robert D. Novak
THE Drug Enforcement Administration's (DEA) Thomas A. Constantine,
a career cop, recently complained to Microsoft's Bill Gates, the
world's richest man, that encryption devices sold by his company and
used by international drug lords are so powerful that they cannot be
deciphered by law enforcement. "Well," replied Gates, "you've got to
get bigger computers."
That is reminiscent of Marie Antoinette's "Let them eat cake!"
advice for bread-less French peasants. As Gates knows, no computer is
big enough to break Microsoft's new codes. But the Senate and House
Commerce committees last week (unreported in the major daily press)
approved bills to end export controls over encryption systems to
which law enforcement and national security officials have no access.
That would give the big drug cartels, now based in Mexico, worry-free
communications with their U.S. operatives.
Constantine and FBI Director Louis J. Freeh are losing their
battle to be able to decipher criminal communications under court
order. High-tech campaign money is winning out. The Republican
Congress has adopted Gates as its poster boy. Sen. John McCain,
seeking the GOP presidential nomination, changed sides three months
ago and last week guided anti-control legislation out of the Commerce
Committee, which he heads. The normally loquacious President Clinton
is silent, as Vice President Al Gore courts Silicon Valley in quest
of the presidency.
Freeh and Constantine are desperate. Wiretapping is law
enforcement's biggest weapon, authorized by court order 1,329 times
nationwide in 1998 - 72 percent in drug cases. No longer able to
infiltrate the narcotics apparatus, the DEA depends on eavesdropping.
But intercepted conversations now are interrupted by a steady
buzz, signifying that intelligible conversation is encrypted. What
experts call "level-one encryption" could be decoded, but the drug
lords have turned to "level two."
[...]
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