======== Newsgroups: alt.privacy.anon-server,alt.anonymous,alt.anonymous.messages,alt.anon.server,talk.politics.crypto,alt.politics.org.covert,alt.politics.org.nsa,alt.politics.datahighway,alt.culture.internet,alt.culture.usenet,alt.cyberspace Subject: NSA SECRETLY SABOTAGING ANONYMITY IN CYBERSPACE From: an366601@anon.penet.fi (** CRAM **) Date: Wed, 17 Jan 1996 11:53:22 UTC from Global Net News "Madsen claims the NSA has deals with Microsoft, Lotus, and Netscape to prevent anonymous email." === [head graphic] [Want to know the e as iest way... Puzzle Palace coauthor Wayne Madsen, in an article written for the June 1995 issue of Computer Fraud & Security Bulletin (Elsevier Advanced Technology Publications), wrote that "according to well-placed sources within the Federal Government and the Internet service provider industry, the National Security Agency (NSA) is actively sniffing several key Internet router and gateway hosts." Madsen says the NSA concentrates its surveillance on destination and origination hosts, as well as "sniffing" for specific key words and phrases. He claims his sources have confirmed that the NSA has contracted with an unnamed private company to develop the software needed to capture Internet data of interest to the agency. According to Madsen, the NSA monitors traffic primarily at two Internet routers controlled by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), one in College Park, MD (dubbed "Fix East") and another at NASA Ames Research Center in Sunnyvale, CA ("Fix West"). Other NSA Internet sniffers, he said, operate at busy routers knows as Mae East (an East Coast hub), Mae West (a West Coast hub), CIX (reportedly based in San Jose), and SWAB (a northern Virginia router operated by Bell Atlantic). Madsen says the NSA may also be monitoring traffic at network access points, the large Internet gateways operated by regional and long-distance service providers. The NAPs allegedly under surveillance are in Pennsauken, NJ (operated by Sprint), Chicago (run by AmeriTech and Bell Communications Research), and San Francisco (Pacific Bell). [Quote] "Madsen claims the NSA has deals with Microsoft, Lotus, and Netscape to prevent anonymous email." [quote] "One senior Federal Government source has reported that NSA has been particularly successful in convincing key members of the US software industry to cooperate with it in producing software that makes Internet messages easier for NSA to intercept, and if they are encrypted, to decode," Madsen wrote. "A knowledgeable government source claims that the NSA has concluded agreements with Microsoft, Lotus and Netscape to permit the introduction of the means to prevent the anonymity of Internet electronic mail, the use of cryptographic key-escrow, as well as software industry acceptance of the NSA-developed Digital Signature Standard (DSS)." Is the NSA really snooping on the Net? And if they are, would that violate the agency's charter, which specifically prohibits it from spying within the US? "Well, Net traffic is routed from God knows where to God knows where around the world," says George Washington University Professor Lance Hoffman, a professor of Communications and Telecommunications Systems Policy at George Washington University. "So if the NSA is doing this, they could say they are not violating their charter not to spy in the US. That's the thing. Intelligent routers send stuff any which way." 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Please, report inappropriate use to abuse@anon.penet.fi For information (incl. non-anon reply) write to help@anon.penet.fi If you have any problems, address them to admin@anon.penet.fi ======== Newsgroups: alt.privacy.anon-server,alt.anonymous,alt.anonymous.messages,alt.anon.server,talk.politics.crypto,alt.politics.org.covert,alt.politics.org.nsa,alt.politics.datahighway,alt.culture.internet,alt.culture.usenet,alt.cyberspace Subject: Re: NSA SECRETLY SABOTAGING ANONYMITY IN CYBERSPACE From: David Williams Date: Fri, 19 Jan 1996 16:14:27 -0800 ** CRAM ** wrote: > Is the NSA really snooping on the Net? And if they are, would that > violate the agency's charter, which specifically prohibits it from > spying within the US? > > "Well, Net traffic is routed from God knows where to God knows where > around the world," says George Washington University Professor Lance > Hoffman, a professor of Communications and Telecommunications Systems > Policy at George Washington University. "So if the NSA is doing this, > they could say they are not violating their charter not to spy in the > US. That's the thing. Intelligent routers send stuff any which way." > This does not mean that NSA isn't dupping the packet traffic across the DREN backbone. The DoD is actively monitoring the "net" for all kinds of stuff. They may even be feeding a large neural net with all the data that passes by their backbone. The implications are profound. The CIA & FBI have already confessed to mining the "net" for selected information and building profiles. None of these issues have been risen to the for when it comes to information and privacy policies. The real danger exists in the time domain analysis of network traffic. Heuristic determinism would, over a period of time on a neural net, would reveal the most important source and destination packets to analyze. This means you could become suspect; not because of what you said, but, where you said it from. That means be careful with whom you share a WAN/LAN with. You could become contaminated. //----------------------__________--------------------------------------/| || \The Netcracker Suite\ U X \ Opinions altered and perspectives |/| || \Symphony on the Net \ N I \ skewed near or about this |/| || \ _____________ \ I N \ Signature. |/| || / \ (_____________)\__\ X U \ |/| || / \__|____________| /__)------/\/ |/| || ( )\ \ \ /\ "The Dance of the Internet Fairy!" |/| || \ / \ \ / / Disney & ABC, G.E. & NBC, Westinghouse |/| || \ / \____________/ / & CBS; when do the nuclear powered |/| || \ / / / / Mickey Mouse dishwasher adverts begin? |/| \______________________________________________________________________|/ PGP Key fingerprint = A5 B1 CE D8 B8 5F AB 3D 7F B9 FB 94 24 81 BE 9F