Wired: Echelon Furor Ends in a Whimper

[Owen Lewis]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ukcrypto-admin@chiark.greenend.org.uk
> [mailto:ukcrypto-admin@chiark.greenend.org.uk]On Behalf Of Brian Gladman
> Sent: 09 July 2001 09:20
> To: UK Crypto Posting
> Subject: Re: Wired: Echelon Furor Ends in a Whimper
>
>
> From: "Owen Lewis" <oml@eloka.demon.co.uk>
> To: <ukcrypto@chiark.greenend.org.uk>
> Sent: Friday, July 06, 2001 1:40 PM
> Subject: RE: Wired: Echelon Furor Ends in a Whimper
>
>
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: ukcrypto-admin@chiark.greenend.org.uk
> > > [mailto:ukcrypto-admin@chiark.greenend.org.uk]On Behalf Of
> Brian Gladman
> > > Sent: 06 July 2001 11:52
> > > To: UK Crypto Posting
> > > Subject: Re: Wired: Echelon Furor Ends in a Whimper
> > >
> >
> > > .....since we need to remove the privacy and industrial/commercial
> > > espionage concerns raised by Echelon without undermining its
> > > value in other
> > > areas.
> >
> > How would you propose that such a precise sorting of sheep from goats
> might
> > be effected? This seems to me to be a fundamental issue and very much at
> the
> > heart of the crypto debate.


I hadn't intended to get into an open ended discussion on the
merits/demerits of an open echange of raw intelligence data between the US
and the EU states. Therefore, suffice it to say that your views as to the
keeping and sharing of ECHELON, here snipped away, rest on an assumption
that such a collection system can discriminate between a mass of 'white
hats' and a small minority of 'black hats' - or sheep and goats to use the
archaic metaphor.

It seems to me and many others that this is an intractable issue and I was
interested as to whether you had a proposal for a general method by which
such discriminatory targeting could be effected. What you wrote above seemed
to indicate that you might.

> But rather than trying to change the behaviour of the US, the EU
> can easily remove the threat of Echelon if it wishes to do so.  All it
> has to do is to
> promote the rapid and ***universal*** deployment of end-to-end
> cryptographic
> information protection (voice and data).  It does not matter that much of
> this protection will be weak since it is the universal use of end-to-end
> encryption, not its strength, that will completely devastate Echelon.
>
> In my view a determined EU plan to do just this would have created a
> situation in which the US would have talked to the European Parliament
> delegation!

I do not understand. If one supposes that *all* electronic communication is
end-to-end enciphered, how can this help 'remove the privacy and
industrial/commercial espionage concerns raised by Echelon without
undermining its value in other areas'?

Surely all it would do is to reduce - undermine - if you prefer - its value
in all its supposed functions? The thing collects and analyses; that is all.
It forms no conclusions and makes no judgements legal, moral, social or
political. People apply those values to the product of the system.

Now, if all the take is in cipher, a result of this will be markedly to
reduce the amount of analysis that can be carried out and therefore
seriously to reduce the value of the system as a whole.

From what you said, it seemed that this was not your goal and that neither
did you believe that such a result would be inevitable. If I am right in
this belief, I would like to understand how such a thing can be achieved.
But perhaps I simply mistook your meaning?

Owen