WHY
USE
ENCRYPTION?
Mark Swearingen
mark@ephesus.com
Created Tuesday 2000 January 25
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Here are two good reasons to consider using encryption to protect your
e-mail: (1) When your e-mail travels across the Internet, it goes through several intermediate "mail servers," and then it sits on the mail server at your Internet service provider until the next time you check it. An unscrupulous system administrator at your ISP -- or at any of those intermediate mail servers -- has the ability to read your e-mail if he wants to. (2) There is a worldwide satellite spy network named "Echelon" which intercepts most of the world's electronic communications -- phone, fax and e-mail -- and scans them for "keywords" that are of interest to their governments, as described in the remainder of this article. Overview of Echelon Echelon is a network of spy stations run by the intelligence agencies of the five-nation UKUSA pact (US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand). It is able to intercept and monitor much of the world's phone, e-mail and fax transmissions -- not only military but civilian, commercial and personal communications as well. The existence of Echelon was first revealed in 1996 by a writer in New Zealand, after intelligence agents there became concerned about its misuse for commercial and political purposes rather than military intelligence. A measure of how secretive the network is can be gleaned from these excerpts: |
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http://www.fas.org/irp/eprint/sp/sp_p.htm [...] Press Clipping Nelson Mail, 14 August 1996 [...] Former [New Zealand] prime minister David Lange said in the book's foreword that as prime minister, and minister in charge of security and intelligence services, he was never told the country was part of an international electronic spy network. "It is an outrage that I and other ministers were told so little, and this raises the question of to whom those concerned saw themselves ultimately answerable," Mr Lange said. Ms Wallace, of Victoria University's public policy group, said today New Zealanders should welcome the book's revelations. "There are major unresolved issues in the accountability of New Zealand's secret agencies," she said. "The GCSB is an outlaw in a literal sense. It is not established by law. Unlike the SIS, which at least has a statute, the GCSB has no legal limit on its functions." [...] http://www.fas.org/irp/eprint/sp/sp_c2.htm Secret Power Chapter 2 [...] The global system has a highly secret codename -- ECHELON. It is by far the most significant system of which the GCSB is a part, and many of the GCSB's daily operations are based around it. The intelligence agencies will be shocked to see it named and described for the first time in print. [...] Six UKUSA stations target the Intelsat satellites used to relay most satellite phone calls, internet, e-mail, faxes and telexes around the world. They are part of a network of secret stations and spy satellites which, between them, intercept most of the communications on the planet. [...] |
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The European Parliament became concerned about the use of this system for industrial espionage by U.S. companies spying on their European competitors. It commissioned a report on the system in September 1998, a summary of which is published on its web page: |
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STOA: Political control technologies - Summary of Interim Study September 1998 http://www.europarl.eu.int/dg4/stoa/en/publi/166499/execsum.htm |
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In spite of the publication of these fairly detailed descriptions of the system based on leaks from the intelligence community, no government in the five-nation UKUSA pact had ever officially admitted the existence of Echelon until Australia did so in May 1999, as reported in the following article from The Age: |
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http://www.theage.com.au/daily/990523/news/news3.html Sunday 23 May 1999 Australia has become the first country openly to admit that it takes part in a global electronic surveillance system that intercepts the private and commercial international communications of citizens and companies from its own and other countries... |
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In response to this public admission, Germany advised its citizens and companies in June 1999 to use strong encryption technology to protect their secrets from U.S. spying: |
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http://www.wired.com/news/news/politics/story/20023.html Germany Endorses Strong Crypto Wired News Report 5:20 p.m. 3.Jun.99.PDT In an apparent response to corporate spying allegedly conducted in Europe by the United States, Germany is encouraging citizens and businesses to use strong cryptography... |
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Also in June 1999, the United States National Security Agency (NSA) refused to provide Congress with information it has requested about the Echelon spy program: |
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http://www.fcw.com/pubs/fcw/1999/0531/web-nsa-6-3-99.html JUNE 3, 1999 . . . 18:34 EDT [...] NSA, the supersecret spy agency known best for its worldwide eavesdropping capabilities, for the first time in the history of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence refused to hand over documents on the Echelon program, claiming attorney/client privilege. [...] |
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You can find the latest news on Echelon through the following Yahoo category: |
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http://headlines.yahoo.com/FC/World/ECHELON/ |
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If you want to protect your e-mail from snooping, download the free PGP encryption program, which interfaces directly with most e-mail programs through a convenient "plug-in," and enables you to render your e-mail unreadable to all but your intended recipient(s). To see an example of what an encrypted message looks like, go to my page on encryption. |