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They Want to Break In
Mike Hudack
Editor-in-Chief
LiloMan
OSAll Contributor
AP
The FBI has always hated encryption -- it´s a thorn in its side. More properly, it´s a wall of thorns. The FBI has always had impunity to wiretap phones, plant microphones and follow suspects -- given a court order, of course (although they were often bypassed or improper). With the advent of encryption there was no way to effectively wiretap.
The FBI isn´t going to sit around while criminals (and regular citizens) have private communications... it just doesn´t work that way. It was only a matter of time before the Justice Department had one of two bills introduced: either key escrow or a burglaring law. The less controversial of the two was probably the latter, but not by much.
In order for a wiretap to be effective the target must not know he is being eavesdropped upon. The serving of a search warrant to discover the contents of encrypted documents would defeat the entire purpose of eavesdropping -- at least if the warrant was served in the traditional sense. The new request from the Justice Department introduced to Congress calls for a new type of stealth search.
The request asks that Congress authorize breaking and entering into a suspects´ residence or office for the purpose of compromising passwords and encryption keys. If passed you won´t know that a warrant has been served upon you until your are either charged with a crime or arrested.
This request has not yet received a response from the ACLU (at the time of this writing) but OSAll has spoken with a congressional staffer who has reviewed the request. "It looks like a complete change in the way searches are conducted," says the staffer in a Senators´ office. "Anything found in the process of attaining the keys and passwords would be admissable too," he continues.
The request, if granted, would allow both electronic and physical intrusion, both stealthy. Under current case law any evidence found in the conduct of a legal search but not specifically named on the warrant is still admissable in court. This means that if a team of FBI agents enters your home to find passwords and crypto keys and finds a gun sitting on the table they are authorized to use that gun against you in court.
Several FBI agents and an administration spokesperson said that the Clinton administration is "supportive of encryption." This latest move seems to suggest they are not, however.
It further requests that the FBI be able to leave eavesdropping devices behind, such as a copy of Back Orifice or the fabled DIRT to continue monitoring.
OSAll is covering this story on a daily basis and is in the process of speaking to several FBI agents and representatives of several citizen rights advocacy groups. We´ll have more information on this story as soon as we receive it.
You can read another good article on this subject, based on an AP report, in the Washington Post. |
