Whit Diffie aand Susan Landau: Internet Eavesdropping

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Randall Webmail <rvh40 () insightbb com>
Date: August 30, 2008 1:32:46 AM EDT
To: dewayne () warpspeed com, johnmacsgroup () yahoogroups com, dave () farber net
Subject: Whit Diffie aand Susan Landau: Internet Eavesdropping

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=internet-eavesdropping

As telephone conversations have moved to the Internet, so have those  
who want to listen in. But the technology needed to do so would entail  
a dangerous expansion of the government's surveillance powers

By Whitfield Diffie and Susan Landau

As long as people have engaged in private conversations, eavesdroppers  
have tried to listen in. When important matters were discussed in  
parlors, people slipped in under the eaves—literally within the “eaves  
drop”—to hear what was being said. When conversations moved to  
telephones, the wires were tapped. And now that so much human activity  
takes place in cyberspace, spies have infiltrated that realm as well.

Unlike earlier, physical frontiers, cyberspace is a human construct.  
The rules, designs and investments we make in cyberspace will shape  
the ways espionage, privacy and security will interact. Today there is  
a clear movement to give intelligence activities a privileged  
position, building in the capacity of authorities to intercept  
cyberspace communications. The advantages of this trend for fighting  
crime and terrorism are obvious.

The drawbacks may be less obvious. For one thing, adding such  
intercept infrastructure would undermine the nimble, bottom-up  
structure of the Internet that has been so congenial to business  
innovation: its costs would drive many small U.S. In ternet service  
providers (ISPs) out of business, and the top-down control it would  
require would threaten the nation’s role as a leader and innovator in  
communications.

Furthermore, by putting too much emphasis on the capacity to intercept  
Internet communications, we may be undermining civil liberties. We may  
also damage the security of cyberspace and ultimately the security of  
the nation. If the U.S. builds extensive wiretapping into our  
communications system, how do we guarantee that the facilities we  
build will not be misused? Our police and intelligence agencies,  
through corruption or merely excessive zeal, may use them to spy on  
Americans in violation of the U.S. Constitution. And, with any  
intercept capability, there is a risk that it could fall into the  
wrong hands. Criminals, terrorists and foreign intelligence services  
may gain access to our surveillance facilities and use them against  
us. The architectures needed to protect against these two threats are  
different.

Such issues are important enough to merit a broad national debate.  
Unfortunately, though, the public’s ability to participate in the  
discussion is impeded by the fog of secrecy that surrounds all  
intelligence, particularly message interception (“signals  
intelligence”).  [SNIP]

http://tinyurl.com/6oolcn






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