British legislation to enforce encryption key disclosure

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From an IT Security and Counter-Intelligence point of view.

If I want to send secret info (as a terrorist or any other type of "baddy", I will use a combination of ruses to get my "bad" info through.

I will send completely innocent info through using an encryption method that is easily identified as encrypted. [PGP mail for example].
The cops come to me and say: please give us your keys. So, I give them the keys. They go away after seeing that it is just me sending a few porn pics to my mate in draconian censored [put country name here] to bypass their filters etc.

However : they might have been duped. My actual secret info is sent to my mate using a steganographic technique. Or even better, we have a coding mechanism where the keys are already in possesion of both parties. This e-mail for example could contain a code. The person recieving the mail knows to look at letter 3 in line 4, then letter 2 in line 5 etc. to build the secret info.

This is NOT helping the enemy, it is just making them use better mechanisms to transmit secret info as seemingly innocuous codes. The main reason for failed intelligence is that the US and the UK rely heavily on technology for necessary espionage, and have forgotten how to do the best couter-intelligence method, namely Humint (Human Intelligence.

Posted by: DiminutiveBob   Posted on: 05/18/06 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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