On Tue, Sep 18, 2001 at 01:08:39AM -0400, R. A. Hettinga wrote:
>
> Also note that 72 percent of those surveyed said anti-encryption laws would
> be "somewhat" or "very" helpful in preventing similar terrorist attacks.
>
An emotional anti-crypto-campaign seems to have started.
Yesterday I saw a special issue of a german TV news magazine
("Report aus München"), one of their main themes were the
communication methods of the terrorists.
The level of the report was poor. Though they had
interviews with an american and a german security expert
(I know the latter one personally, he's really an expert),
they did not manage to understand what the experts said
(the german one explained steganography).
They confused encryption and steganography several times.
The conclusion was, that cryptography enabled this kind
of attack. Not that they had any kind of encrypted message
or any hint that cryptography was actually used. Their
simple logic is that such an attack is not possible without
cryptography, therefore the attackers must have used cryptography.
Some time ago, a arabian man who i said to be one of
Bin Laden's agents, was taken under arrest in germany.
The police confiscated some CDROMs he was carrying, but they
didn't find anything except harmless arabian texts on these cdroms.
The TV magazine took this as an evidence that they must have
used cryptography.
What a kind of logic: We didn't find any suspicious
messages -> he must have used cryptography -> guilty.
These kind of magazines are the ones which influence
people's and politician's opinion.
Hadmut
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