padlocks with backdoors - TSA approved

Ralf-Philipp Weinmann weinmann at cdc.informatik.tu-darmstadt.de
Tue Feb 27 09:50:51 EST 2007


On Feb 26, 2007, at 21:20 , Hadmut Danisch wrote:

> Hi,
>
> has this been mentioned here before?

Yes. It is old news, Bruce Schneier's Cryptogram mentioned it in  
April 2004, actually [1].

> Never seen anything in real world which is such a precise analogon of
> a crypto backdoor for governmental access.

Welcome to the "real world". Things suck here.

>
> Ironically, they advertise it as a big advantage and important  
> feature,
> since it allows to arrive with the lock intact and in place instead of
> cut off.

Some of apparently have the feature that you can tell *IF* the TSA  
has opened them with their master-keys. You are supposed to find a  
TSA notice in your bag if it has been opened and searched. Although  
I'm not sure whether you can really raise hell if they forget to  
stick the notice in there after having searched your bag.


> This is the point where I decided to have nightmares from now on.

G'night then.

Cheers,
Ralf

[1] Crypto-Gram Newsletter, April 15th, 2004
     http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-0404.html

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