On Tue, May 18, 1999 at 04:18:11PM -0400, Perry E. Metzger wrote:
>
> What does shock me, however, is that so many European countries have
> been completely blind to what has been going on up to this point.
They are not exactly blind. They just love this certain way of
simulating blindness, called ignorance.
The european and especially the german politics are not driven by
intelligence, but by interests and lobbyism. It is well known (at least
enough people know), that there is much american espionage in Europe.
As long as the USA know how to keep the interests in not touching this point
here stronger than the interests in protecting us, nothing will change.
> Does
> everyone remember the speculation from some time back that the
> U.S. had employed ECHELON based espionage to determine the negotiating
> positions of various Wassenar countries in order to achieve
> international cryptographic controls? I assume that we can't be the
> only people who've noted this.
At the latest in the beginning of the nineties, when the GDR and
the communistic bloc were gone, it was absolutely clear, that the
CIA and NSA were spying out us. They had installed large equipment to
eavesdrop the communications in east european countries (e.g. those
gigantic antennas in Bad Aibling). When the Eastern bloc fell into
pieces, they didn't disassemble the antennas and reduce the stuff, as
expected. They just turned the antennas 180 degrees to the west and
increased the stuff. Guess what this means...
> Does everyone remember the silly trivia
> that many European countries got in exchange for their support on
> cryptographic controls? Things like arms contracts -- the phrase
> "selling one's birthright for a mess o' pottage" comes to mind.
We are actually becoming some sort of american colony. In many areas we
completely stopped development and research and get into dependence of
America. Strange things are going on.
> One wonders, however, if the latest revelations that companies like
> Thompson S.A. and Airbus have lost contracts because ECHELON was used
> to spy on them and give information on bids to American competitors
> will create any change European policy.
There are many such cases. We lose tens or hundreds of billions of
german Mark by espionage, but many companies still don't accept the
need to protect them selves or - believe it or not - swear on american
equipment and technology for protection.
That's not just simple blindness, that's much worse.
> If the Europeans know what's good for them, they'll start pushing mass
> use of crypto instead of fighting it.
"The Europeans" or european interests still don't exist. They are only
political groups and lobbyists, who know what's good for
them. Unfortunately, this is definitely not what were good for
Europe. This made it a lot easier for the USA, because in today's
Europe no single country can protect itself without a european
consensus. A consensus is almost impossible due to those different
interests. Whatever you do, someone puts a veto on. This is what
made things like Wassenaar or Echelon so easy.
What do you think, why can the USA make war within Europe without
any need of asking someone else? Why do the USA have more power here
in Europe than the european countries and why do the USA not even
correctly inform the european governments about details of the war?
I am currently working as a computer security engineer and consultant.
It is very difficult and sometimes impossible to convince people and
improve security. Not for technical, but for political reasons and
deficiencies in the management of many german companies. Too many
german managers completely lack knowledge and appreciation of data
security. I know one of the largest german universities, where the computer
science department doesn't see a need of doing or teaching computer
and network security.
On the other hand, there are many things and aspects in America, which
we don't understand and which we consider as beeing irrational.
And sometimes things are just funny, e.g. to see an american
embassador trying to convince the germans of the american way of data
privacy.
Hadmut
