[27580] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: government eavesdropping
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (William Allen Simpson)
Fri Feb 25 15:04:46 2000
Message-ID: <38B6ADEB.F9910970@greendragon.com>
Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2000 11:29:41 -0500
From: William Allen Simpson <wsimpson@greendragon.com>
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To: nanog@merit.edu
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Thanks for all the private messages (I guess), but you all certainly
know that I get at least as much email as you do, and if it's important
enough to write you a personal reply, then it's important enough to
send to the list....
====
First, the Moskowitz story, excerpted. If you want the whole thing,
buy him lunch, he's a nice guy -- just remember he eats kosher.
Chrysler owned a big share of an Austrian company (now, Chrysler is
owned by a German company, how time flies). They started running
IPSec on the international link. They got a call from the French,
saying it is/was illegal to send encrypted data over their lines.
Chrysler had to reroute its link, through Italy as best I remember.
This confirms several things, not the least of which is the French are
monitoring commercial data circuits.
====
No, I've never been inside any MAE/NAP, and I have no photographs of
men in black. But, besides the abundant persistent rumors, I've been
on privacy panels hosted by my local congresscritters. And, I'm told
by said congresscritters that the administration brags about their
monitoring of Internet traffic at the international exchange points,
as an indication of their wonderful efficacy in tracking pernicious
activities, such as terrorists, pornographers, gambling, gun, and
alcohol sales, and asked for more funding in last year's appropriations
cycle. They also claim that commercial information is removed.
This confirms several things, not the least of which is that there is
intercepted commercial data to be removed.
I presume that the techniques used are similar to the French.
And not too different from their investigations of me, still classified
secret. The files refer to email messages and excerpt voice
conversations, none of which they got from court orders served upon me!
The small parts of these I've been able to get under FOIA are posted on
the net -- mostly blacked out -- but careful reading indicates that the
investigation began after the posting of an internet-draft for PPP CHAP,
back when it was called the "cryptographic handshake authentication
protocol". Securing the net considered harmful....
Please FOIA your own FBI files before you tell me that I'm paranoid.
Be prepared to pester them for 6 years to meet their statutory 20 day
deadline.
====
Some patents have been widely circulated, being number 5,937,422 among
others. Remember that the patent office can keep patents secret when
they affect "national security".
I presume, based on my experience, that in addition to those alcohol
peddlers, the semantic trees search for "security" and "cryptography".
====
Merit has been around longer than most ISPs. They have had machines
compromised. They have had machines attacked by DoS. They serve
college campuses. They have a clue coefficient. 'nuff said.
WSimpson@UMich.edu
Key fingerprint = 17 40 5E 67 15 6F 31 26 DD 0D B9 9B 6A 15 2C 32
