1. Wiretapping and Encryption
More Week 5 cont.

2. Early Forms of Wiretapping
Party Lines
Human Operators

3. Wiretapping Today Federal and state law enforcement Businesses
Private Detectives
Political Candidates
......

4. Cellular Phones
Can be tapped with over-the-counter devices

5. Standard Phones
Easily tapped if signal travels by microwave or satellite
Government has secured phones

6. Legal Mandates 1937 - Supreme Court rules that wiretapping is illegal
Congress explicitly allowed it by law enforcement agencies
needs court order
Electronic Communications Privacy Act includes new technologies

7. Cryptography - Making and breaking of ciphers
Translation of the original message into a new incomprehensible one by a mathematical algorithm using a specific KEY
Plaintext - a message or data
Ciphertext - encrypted text
Decryption - decipher back to plaintext

8. Encryption Includes: Coding scheme or cryptographic algorithm
Specific sequence of characters key used by the algorithm

9. Examples
Cereal box codes
Substitution cipher
Cryptoquip in newspaper

10. Variations - Symmetric
Use the same key to encrypt and decrypt (secret key)
Requires a more secure system to send the key than the system itself

11. Variation - Asymmetric
Use a key (public key) to encrypt a message
Another (private key) to decrypt the message

12. Who Uses Encryption? Banks Industry Professionals National ID cards
Criminals
Government
.....

13. Industrial Espionage Knowledge of a company’s cost and price structure
Market research
Strategic plans
Order and customer lists
Insider information

14. Professionals Cellular telephones and electronic mail
unencrypted data on machines

15. Criminals
Cryptography allows criminals to keep their identities a secret
Provides security to law breakers
Allows anonymity
Don’t use systems that leave trails

16. Reliability
The longer the key has remained unbroken, the stronger it is likely to be
The longer the key is in use, the more likely someone will be able to discover it
larger amount of info will be compromised
change key frequently

17. Algorithms available DES - Data Encryption Standard
Developed by IBM in the 1970’s
Adopted as a Federal Information Processing Standard
Uses a 56 bit key
Has been broken easily
To extend life - extend key to 128 bits
or triple DES

18. RSA algorithm Used in public key cryptography Patented in US
Based on multiplication of large prime numbers

19. PGP - Pretty Good Privacy
Based on RSA
Used for protecting
And Online Credit Card transactions

20. New Controversies
Senate Bill - Government wants to be able to intercept any message and be able to decode it as well - not passed
FBI and wiretapping - Telephony bills
FBI and Clipper Chip

21. Benefits of Government Intervention
Aid law enforcement in protecting us from criminals and terrorists

22. Problems
Threats to
privacy
global competitiveness
civil liberties

23. Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act 1994
to and from Requires that telecommunications equipment be designed so govt. can:
intercept all wire and electronic communic.
Intercept comms from mobile users
Obtain call-identifying info
phone numbers
Have info transmitted to a specific location
Government will help foot the bill

24. Arguments for... Protection from terrorists and criminals
FBI wants no new privileges
BUT
Necessity has not been justified
Expense and other problems outweigh the benefits
There has never been a guarantee of interception of private messages before

25. NEED? Wiretaps are less useful than informants, witnesses, etc. BUT
90% of terrorist cases used wiretaps
Industry claims full compliance with FBI
Continued cooperation is not guaranteed

26. COST? A lot more than government is giving Will save money in
fines, forfeitures, prevented economic loss
Used only in a subset of investigations
Could use the money on other technologies

27. Innovation and global competitiveness
Stifle or delay new technologies
economic costs
prevent new technologies’ implementation
Damage to US competitiveness in global markets due to reduced security and privacy

28. Protection from Dossier Society
Digital cash made possible by public key encryption
Secure financial transactions without a credit card or checking account number

29. E-Cash (like PayPal) No link between payer and recipient
Convenience of credit card
Anonymity of cash
Use on Internet for ordinary shopping
Can transfer credentials
Can prevent duplicate cash files
Back up at home in case card is lost or stolen

30. E-Cash continued Not easy to form a consumer profile or dossier
Prevent fraud and forgery
Protect privacy from mailing lists
More control over personal information

31. History of Encryption Secret - NSA National Security Agency
can do anything
has powerful computers - break ciphers and create ciphers
monitors all communications between US and other countries

32. Government Interception
NSA censored research
controlled researchers
Export restrictions
munitions
can’t export secure systems