Operation In US History - Scores Israelis Held

This article was pulled from newsmax shortly after it was released.

>  Operation In US History -
>     Scores Israelis Held
>     By Charles R. Smith
>     12-20-1
> In the wake of the September 11 terrorist attack, the FBI has
> stumbled on the largest espionage ring ever discovered inside the
> United States. The U.S. Justice Department is now holding nearly 100
> Israeli citizens with direct ties to foreign military, criminal and
> intelligence services.     The spy ring reportedly includes employees
> of two Israeli-owned companies that currently perform almost all the
> official wiretaps for U.S. local, state and federal law enforcement.
>    The U.S. law enforcement wiretaps, authorized by the
> Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), appear to
> have been breached by organized crime units working inside Israel and
> the Israeli intelligence service, Mossad.     Both Attorney General
> John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller were warned on Oct. 18
> in a hand-delivered letter from local, state and federal law
> enforcement officials. The warning stated, "Law enforcement's current
> electronic surveillance capabilities are less effective today than
> they > were at the time CALEA was enacted."     The spy ring enabled
> criminals to use reverse wiretaps against U.S. intelligence and law
> enforcement operations. The illegal monitoring may have resulted in
> the deaths of several informants and reportedly spoiled planned
> anti-drug raids on crime syndicates.     Global Spy and Crime Network
>     The penetration of the U.S. wiretap system has led to a giant spy
> hunt across the globe by American intelligence agencies. U.S.
> intelligence officials now suspect the spy ring shared and sold
> information to other nations.     "Why do you think Putin so
> nonchalantly and with such great fanfare announced the shutdown of
> the Lourdes listening post in Cuba?" noted Douglas Brown, president
> of Multilingual Data Solutions Inc. and program director at the
> Nathan Hale Institute.     "Besides the PR benefit right before his
> visit here, the Russians don't need it anymore. They've scraped
> together a cheaper, more effective monitoring system. Is the Israeli
> company an element of that system? I don't know," stated Brown.   
> "With all the whining and crying about Echelon and Carnivore,
> critics, domestic and foreign, of U.S. electronic eavesdropping
> vastly overestimate our abilities to process and disseminat> e the
> stuff," noted Brown.     "The critics also underestimated the
> incompetence and total ineptness of the people running our
> intelligence and law enforcement services during the Clinton-Gore
> years. One guy uses his home computer for storing top secret
> documents; another high-tech guru guy can't figure out how to save
> and retrieve his e-mail, and the guy in charge of everything is
> having phone sex over an open line with one of his employees," said
> Brown.     "On the other hand, the Europeans, including the Russians,
> have been much more focused on the nuts and bolts of practical
> systems to process the information they scoop up. The stories linking
> German intelligence and the L scandal got very little play here but
> were widely noted in the European software community," said Brown.  
>  "Except for a few Germans and an occasional Pole, nobody can match
> the Russians in designing and developing algorithms. We may have some
> of the world's greatest programmers, but the Russians and Europeans
> do a better job of matching up linguists and area experts with their
> programmers," noted Brown.     The discovery of a major spy ring
> inside the United States is straining the already tense relations
> with Israel. Although, Israel denied any involvement with the
> penetration of the U.S. wiretap system, the CIA and FBI are
> investigating the direct government ties to the former Israeli
> military and intelligence officials now being held by the Justice
> Department.     Israeli Company Provides U.S. Wiretaps     One
> company reported to be under investigation is Comverse Infosys, a
> subsidiary of an Israeli-run private telecommunications firm.
> Comverse provides almost all the wiretapping equipment and software
> for U.S. law enforcement.     Custom computers and software made by
> Comverse are tied into the U.S. phone network in order to intercept,
> record and store wiretapped calls, and at the same time transmit them
> to investigators.     The penetration of Comverse reportedly allowed
> criminals to wiretap law enforcement communications in reverse and
> foil authorized wiretaps with advance warning. One major drug bust
> operation planned by the Los Angeles police was foiled by what now
> appear to be reverse wiretaps placed on law enforcement phones by the
> criminal spy ring.     Flawed laws Led to Compromise     Several U.S.
> privacy and security advocates contend the fault actually lies in the
> CALEA legislation passed by Congress that allowed the spy ring to
> operate so effectively. Lisa Dean, vice president for technology
> policy at Free Congress Foundation, delivered a scathing critique of
> t> he breach of the U.S. law enforcement wiretap system.     "We are
> exercising our 'I told you so' rights on this," said Dean.     "From
> the beginning, both the political right and left warned Congress and
> the FBI that they were making a huge mistake by implementing CALEA.
> That it would jeopardize the security of private communications,
> whether it's between a mother and her son or between government
> officials. The statement just issued by law enforcement agencies has
> confirmed our worst fears," concluded Dean.     "How many more 9/11s
> do we have to suffer?" asked Brad Jansen, deputy director for
> technology policy at the Free Congress Foundation.     "The CALEA
> form of massive surveillance is a poor substitute for real law
> enforcement and intelligence work. It is an after-the-fact method of
> crime fighting. It is not designed to prevent crime. Massive
> wiretapping does not equal security. Instead, we have elected to
> jeopardize our national security in exchange for poor law
> enforcement," said Jansen.     "For example, FINCEN monitoring of all
> money transactions did not detect al-Qaeda, nor did it find Mohamed
> Atta before he boarded his last flight. It was an ATM receipt left in
> his rental car that led the FBI to the bin Laden bank accounts,"
> noted Jansen.     U.S. National Security Compromised     "The CALEA
> approach is the same approach law enforcement has been pushing for a
> number of years. It's the same approach that was used to push
> Carnivore, Magic Lantern, FINCEN and ev> en the failed Clipper
> project. This approach leads to a compromise in national security and
> in personal security for the American public," said Jansen.     "In
> addition, there is always government abuse of these kinds of
> systems," stated Jansen. "Law enforcement on all levels does a very
> poor job in policing itself. We need to hold our police and
> government officials to the highest standards."     "This also hurts
> the U.S. economy when the whole world knows that our communication
> systems are not secure. We cannot compete with inferior products when
> other countries are exporting secure software and hardware. New
> Zealand, India and Chili already offer security products that
> actually provide real security," stated Jansen.     "The current
> mentality of law enforcement is what failed to protect us from 9/11.
> CALEA wiretaps will not protect us from terror attacks in the future.
> The system does not provide better intelligence information. It
> actually leads to less security and more crime. We get the worst of
> both worlds," concluded Jansen.        All Rights Reserved ©
> NewsMax.com

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"Encryption on wrong side of law, officers say"

Letter to the Editor, Chicago Tribune:

Reading this Chicago Tribune article, I was pleased to see a quote from Bruce Schneier, but the article glossed over what seems to me to be the most important issue.

While Mr Salkowski discusses the implications of Congress putting further restrictions on encryption technology, the article completely glosses over the question of whether it is constitutionally possible for Congress to put restrictions on the domestic use of cryptography.


Date: Monday, January 29, 2001
Section: Business
Page: 2
Source: By Joe Salkowski, Tribune Media Services.

"Instead of building a defensive wall, we're planting a huge stake in the ground and hoping the attacker will only take the path that runs into the stake," wrote Bruce Schneier, a well-respected crypto guru who runs Counterpane Internet Security Inc. "A smart attacker will simply go around the stake."

Such vulnerabilities are actually beneficial for those who would make legitimate use of encryption. As long as police have a shot at working around a criminal's use of strong data-scrambling technology, there's no reason to stop the rest of us from using it to sign online contracts, send secure messages and store critical files out of a hacker's reach.

Privacy advocates complain that the key-tracing device installed on Scarfo's computer is too invasive. His defense attorney also is expected to argue that current laws don't authorize such methods. It's possible they'll succeed, as the judge who authorized the device relied on laws designed for listening devices. In the long run, though, it would make sense for Congress or the courts to make sure police have the power to install encryption workarounds in circumstances similar to those that authorize traditional "bugs."

The process is invasive, to be sure, but there's no particular reason our computer files should be considered more sacrosanct than our spoken words. Besides, it's a reasonable price to avoid further restrictions on a technology that is becoming more useful every day.

We should all have the right to keep our secrets safe, even on the Net. And unless we give police a reasonable chance to sniff out a few of them, Congress may feel compelled to leave us with none at all.