>On Fri, 5 May 2000 08:58:45 -0400 "Arnold G. Reinhold"
><[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>> It's worse than that. The new reports are to cover "law enforcement
>> encounters with encrypted communications in the execution of wiretap
>> orders." http://www.politechbot.com/docs/clinton-crypto.050300.html
>> "Encounters" suggests that there will be no distinction between
>> encryption that hinders law enforcement access and encryption that
>> does not. For example, any tap of a GSM cell phone could be reported
>> even though the cipher GSM uses is relatively easy to break. In 1999
>> there were 676 authorized taps for cell phones and pagers vs. 399 for
>> stationary phones. (1998: 576 vs 494, so the trend is toward cell
>> phones)
>
>Any tap on the GSM cell phone will _not_ be on the encrypted over-the-air
>interface but simply on the plaintext leaving the base station on the fixed
>network.
According to the White House press release the test was "encountered
encryption" and they could well have counted GSM even if they could
get around the encryption as you describe. Declan points out that the
law was worded more carefully than the press release, so things are
not as bad as I feared. Point for Congress.
It will be interesting to see what the reports say. But it is worth
noting that according to
http://www.uscourts.gov/wiretap99/contents.html there were 1350
wiretaps approved by state and federal judges in the US in 1999. 72%
were for drug cases. Over the last 10 years, wiretaps have accounted
for an average of less than 2500 convictions per year. Hence wiretaps
convict only a tiny fraction of the US prison population, which is
now over 1.3 million.
Furthermore, law enforcement has many ways to deal with encryption:
traffic analysis, bugs, viruses, informers,... If it gets the bad
guys to talk more, encryption could be a boon for LE.
Arnold Reinhold
