[3133] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
IP: Cyber Spies Spin Russian Web
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Robert Hettinga)
Mon Aug 3 11:27:12 1998
Date: Mon, 3 Aug 1998 08:11:27 -0400
To: cryptography@c2.net
From: Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>
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Date: Sun, 2 Aug 1998 22:40:54 EDT
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Subject: IP: Cyber Spies Spin Russian Web
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The St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times, Friday, 24 July 1998
ANOTHER PIECE IN THE PUZZLE
Cyber Spies Spin Russian Web
By Bradley Cook
While international lending institutions play cat and mouse
with the Russian economy, the power and budget of FAPSI,
Russia's counterpart to the U.S. National Security Agency
(NSA) continues an exponential climb.
FAPSI, or the Federal Agency for Government Communications
and Information, has tens of thousands of people in its
service. And despite plans to reduce personnel 40 percent
by the year 2001, FAPSI is slated to triple its current
budget to 11 billion rubles ($1.8 billion) per year through
2001.
FAPSI has a unique position in the Russian government
because it is responsible for the electronic surveillance
of Russia's perceived enemies both at home and abroad.
Created by a decree from President Boris Yeltsin in 1993,
FAPSI has steadily increased not only its budget, but its
range of powers within the Russian government. FAPSI
evolved from the Administration of Information Resources
which itself was formed from various divisions of the
former KGB's electronic surveillance, decoding and
encryption departments. The legal limitations of FAPSI
operations are much wider than its chief rival's -- the NSA
-- because under U.S. law, the NSA is not authorized to
carry out surveillance of its own citizens.
The power held by FAPSI first began to worry state-weary
Russians when Yeltsin issued Presidential Decree 334 in
1995, which declared illegal any encryption software or
hardware device not approved by FAPSI. It stands to reason
that FAPSI would not approve any encryption technology that
it did not have the ability to crack. That would run
counter to the agency's purpose, which is to gather as much
information possible about financial dealings and political
ambitions in the name of national security. Among other
ramifications, Decree 334 means that no Russian bank can
guarantee its customers confidentiality of their account
information -- a large barrier to legal and efficient
commercial activity.
In a government where rival agencies fight each other for
turf, FAPSI not only has domestic electronic surveillance
superiority, it also runs Russia's largest signals
intelligence (SIGINT) operation abroad. FAPSI's Lourdes
SIGINT facility near Havana, Cuba, is only 140 kilometers
from Florida - making it ideal for gathering intelligence
on the United States. From this facility at Lourdes, Russia
for years has keept an estimated 2,000 Russian technicians
to monitor U.S. military communications, commercial
satellites, merchant shipping and Florida-based NASA space
programs. According to reports published earlier this year
in the Miami Herald, the Kremlin learned of U.S. battle
plans for the Gulf War through its Cuban-based spy network.
The U.S. Central Command, which is responsible for U.S.
forces in the Middle East, is easily within reach of the
Russian facility because it is based in Tampa, Florida.
Not content with expanding their already considerable
overseas operations, FAPSI and other Russian communications
agencies have prepared a draft project that would force all
Internet providers in Russia to install a snooping device
connected to a high-speed data link to the FSB's Internet
control room. A translated copy of the draft copy, posted
by Maxim Otstavnov, editor of the crypto newsletter
"CompuNomika" can be viewed at
http://www.ice.ru/libertarium/sorm/sormdocengl.html.
The snooping device connected to a dedicated superhighway
from Internet providers to the FSB would make it possible
for the KGB successor agency to have unfettered real-time
monitoring of every e-mail message and web page sent or
received in Russia.
The natural reaction for many Internet users would be to
respond to this Orwellian surveillance technique by
encrypting their e-mail with widely available software. But
FAPSI issues all licenses for encryption technology in
Russia and has the codes to break such encryption. In
theory, under Russian law, FAPSI would be restrained by the
same legal requirements as those covering phone taps or
letter-opening, for which it must make a formal application
to the courts.
But FAPSI and FAPSI officials have been circumventing
Russian law since FAPSI was created. Numerous high-ranking
FAPSI functionaries have been forced to leave the agency
due to financial scandals. This list of disgraced former
FAPSI officials include its financial director, chief of
the military-medical service and the former deputy general
director.
And when the boys at FAPSI aren't stealing secrets or
money, they are trying their hand at marketing. Despite the
fact that government agencies are not supposed to market
products, FAPSI announced in May that it was entering the
wireless communication business with an untappable phone at
the cool price of $12,000. They claim this phone -- which
handles voice and data transmissions -- "would be equipped
with encryption that would take a hundred years to break."
A hundred years for anyone but the boys at FAPSI, that is.
Copyright 1998 The St. Petersburg Times.
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-----------------
Robert A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@philodox.com>
Philodox Financial Technology Evangelism <http://www.philodox.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
