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Date: Mon, 09 Aug 2004 20:19:35 -0700 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: John Young <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: NSA Overcomes Fiber-Optic and Encryption Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Excerpt below from a Baltimore Sun article of August 8, 2004. Some of it could be true, but. http://cryptome.org/dirnsa-shift.htm ----- Director of NSA shifts to new path By Scott Shane Sun National Staff August 8, 2004 ... Technology revolution Given the dire assessments a few years ago, it is notable that Hayden says the communications revolution has on the whole been a plus, not a minus, for the NSA. The NSA director declines to elaborate. But interviews with outside experts suggest that the agency has managed to overcome the challenges posed by fiber-optic cable and encryption. "My opinion is that at this point, those are little more than a speed bump to NSA," says Steve Uhrig, president of SWS Security, a Harford County firm that builds eavesdropping and counter-eavesdropping systems for U.S. and foreign police agencies. "They have a virtually unlimited budget, and they can put amazing resources to work on a problem." Several sources who regularly speak with NSA officials say they believe Uhrig is right. Although they do not know the details, they say the agency has almost certainly managed to tap fiber cables on a large-scale basis, making access to the information inside less of a problem than its overwhelming volume. The NSA has also found a silver lining to the use of encrypted e-mail: Even if a particular message cannot be read, the very use of encryption can flag it for NSA's attention. By tracking the relatively few Internet users in a certain country or region who take such security measures, NSA analysts might be able to sketch a picture of a terrorist network. Information 'in motion' And by focusing their electronic tricks on messages as they are first typed on a computer or when they are read on the other end - what security experts call "information at rest" - NSA technical experts might be able to bypass otherwise-unbreakable encryption used when the information is "in motion." Meanwhile, the popularity of e-mail and particularly of cell phones has worked to the NSA's advantage in the battle against terrorism. The NSA's computers can track and sort huge volumes of e-mail far more easily than they can manage telephone intercepts, because text is consistently represented in digital code. And cell phones - as handy for terrorist plotters as for everyone else - provide not just an eavesdropping target but also a way to physically track the user. Uhrig, who has installed cellular intercept systems in several countries, says that as cell phones have proliferated, the "cells" served by a tower or other antenna have correspondingly grown smaller. "A big hotel may have a cell for every other floor. Every big office building is its own cell," he says. Easier tracking By following a switched-on cell phone as it shifts from cell to cell, "you can watch the person move," Uhrig says. "You can tell the direction he's moving. If he's moving slow, he's walking. If he's moving fast, he's in a car. The tracking is sometimes of much more interest than the contents of a call." ----- --- end forwarded text -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]