[3927] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
"Europe plans huge spy web"
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Brown, R Ken)
Fri Jan 8 10:03:22 1999
From: "Brown, R Ken" <brownrk1@texaco.com>
To: "'ukcrypto@maillist.ox.ac.uk'" <ukcrypto@maillist.ox.ac.uk>,
cryptography@c2.net, cypherpunks@einstein.ssz.com
Date: Fri, 8 Jan 1999 06:35:22 -0600
No surprise to anyone who reads these lists, but yesterday's Telegraph
newspaper in the UK (actually published not 500 metres from where I'm
sitting - the journalists drink in the same bar that we do) has an article
"Europe plans huge spy web" by Simon Davies with quotes from Ian Brown.
John Young onlined it at Cryptome at http://jya.com/eurospy.htm with links
to the Telegraph and to the originators at
http://www.telepolis.de/tp/deutsch/special/enfo/6329/1.html (unfortunately
German isn't one of my languages. Actually, as a typical Englishman, neither
is anything else except English. But the nice chaps at Telepolis have
helpfully summarised it in English for us)
Probably John or someone else posted this yesterday but I missed it in the
> 400 messages I deleted unread.
Apologies if I'm wasting bandwidth.
>From the Telegraph:
"To the dismay of advocates of strong encryption, Enfopol will function on
the principle that all code must
be capable of being broken. The Enfopol system will be aided by a "subject
tagging" system capable of
tracking targets wherever they travel. Known as the "International User
Requirements for Interception"
(IUR), the tagging system will create a data processing and transmission
network that involves not only
the names, addresses and phone numbers of targets and associates, but email
addresses, credit card
details, PINs and passwords. "
It's almost scary - this and the Wassenar agreement imply that They really
were intending do do all the nasty things we said They wanted to do. Why
can't we be right about any of the good stuff? And no surprise that the
push comes from the USA & not any of the supposedly "socialist" but in
practice merely liberal places on the cold side of the North Sea. (although
what the hell the governments of the Netherlands or Denmark think they are
doing going along with all this beats me). The timing is impeccable. If any
of us complain to our governments or the EU now they will say "we've never
heard of it". In a few months time they'll say "it is only a draft, it
hasn't been put to parliament, we can't discuss it yet, there are no firm
proposals" . Then, when Wassenar has been incorporated into local laws they
will say "We have to pass this because it is required by our international
treaty obligations", as if the same NSA/GCHQ hacks hadn't drafted both the
Wassenar update and these Enfopol proposals. A sad day for Europe when the
military are allowed to write the laws. Oh well. Big Brother really is
watching you.
Now where did I leave that old copy of PGP...
Ken Brown
