Code breakers crack GSM cellphone encryption

bear bear at sonic.net
Wed Sep 10 12:46:54 EDT 2003



On Mon, 8 Sep 2003, Dave Emery wrote:

>	Just to amplify this a bit, does anyone seriously think the
>NSA's satellite and embassy based cellphone interception capability is
>primarily targeted against - US - GSM calls ?   Or that they can
>routinely get warrants to listen in using the wired tapping
>infrastructure in say Russia or France or Iran ?

Of course the NSA's satellite and embassy based cellphone interception
capability isn't primarily targeted against - US - calls; that would
be illegal.  The snooping in the US is done by others and then handed
over to the NSA instead.  And of course the NSA does the same for
them.  This is what the UKUSA agreement is all about.

Bluntly, no matter who does the actual interception work, in the
modern world every intel agency's analytic and correlative resources
are targeted against everybody in the world.  To say that some
particular agency doesn't do intercepts in some particular country is
irrelevant; It's all just data. Remember lawmakers learning that the
internet treats censorship as damage and routes around it?  Well,
we're looking at the same phenomenon here: the worldwide intel
community treats privacy laws and operational restrictions as damage
and routes around them.  It's exactly the same thing.

I'd be willing to bet most nations even get intel on their own
citizens that's gathered by actively hostile countries: An actively
hostile nation, let's say, snoops on american citizens.  Then they
share the intel product with someone they've got a treaty with, and
then that country shares it with somebody they've got a treaty with,
and they share it with the US.  It's all just routing.  Someone has
information somebody else wants, somebody else has money or intel to
swap for it.  It doesn't take a genius to figure out, it's just going
to happen.  Anything an intel service shares with anybody, it's
putting into the network, and it's going to get around to everybody.

				Bear

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