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: 10 July 2001 09:25
> 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: Monday, July 09, 2001 9:49 PM
> Subject: RE: Wired: Echelon Furor Ends in a Whimper

> > > [snip]
> > > In order to avoid a long debate about this I should make it clear
> > > that I am
> > > in favour of the universal use of cryptography for end-to-end
> information
> > > protection.
> >
> > No long debate over that. I quite understand that to be your position.
> What
> > I do not understand is one is to reconcile that with ".....remove the
> > privacy and industrial/commercial espionage concerns raised by Echelon
> > without undermining its
> > value in other areas". If you have the answer to that, then you have a
> very
> > powerful idea indeed.
>
> I really want to avoid a long debate about this but my comment has to be
> considered in the context in which it was made, namely that of proposals
> that an EU Parliiamentary group could make to protect
> commercial/industrial
> information assets in Europe.
>
> My suggestion (a) does this, and (b) does not impact significantly on the
> value of Echelon unless the content and domain so protected provides a
> substantial part of the value of Echelon.
>
> And in my view it doesn't.

I can't follow your train of thought in this matter -which may be a greater
sadness to me that it is to you :)

You also said:

> 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.

To me, the your different thoughts will not cohere.

Either one might seek to "devastate" Echelon or one seeks to assure the
major category of traffic passes unread/unanalysed whilst still facilitating
the reading/analysis of selected traffic. 'Universal' end to end encryption
might secure the first objective but one cannot see how it will assist the
latter (other than by backdoors in all ciphers only operable selectively by
user and only by court order etc etc and I'm sure that would not be what you
were driving at. Selective hoovering? I think not. Collection systems behave
more like a dredge that a drift net with a specified minimum size of mesh.

If your two expressions of thought are to interlock, we need to fit a
missing piece. You are reluctant to provide that piece and that is that. No
one is under any obligation - even of noblesse - to say more that he wishes.

In any event, it is clear to both of us that the former objective is
unobtainable for practical reasons. An idea for the latter thought would
have been interesting though.

ATB,

Owen