----Original Message-----
From: Lev Lafayette <[log in to unmask]>
To: John Armitage <[log in to unmask]>
Date: 03 October 2000 01:21
Subject: Ex-NSA Warning



Here John, thought you might like this...

Lev Lafayette. 
State Field Officer, Parliamentary Labor Party (Victoria)
Thesis in Progress: "A Social Theory of the Internet", Ashworth Centre for
 Social Theory, University of Melbourne.
[log in to unmask] http://www.student.unimelb.edu.au/~lev

Will Knight, ZDNet

Ex-spook believes that software backdoors are out there, fuelling
conspiracy theories

Former NSA (National Security Agency) analyst and representative
of Internet rights watchdog EPIC (Electronic Privacy Information
Centre) Wayne Madison warned privacy groups Friday that a growing
number of proprietary commercial software applications may have
backdoors allowing the security services to carry out surveillance
activities.

Speaking to privacy groups as well as cryptography and security
experts at the International Forum on Surveillance by Design at
the London School of Economics, Madison warned that this is an area
of growing interest for security services such as the NSA. "A lot
of manufacturers play ball with the NSA," said Madison. "This is
an area that the NSA is moving into a lot and we have to be really
careful about it."

Until recently the US government strictly controlled the strength
>of cryptography in software exported to different countries, in
>order to protect the government's ability to access and monitor
>communications data. The regulations were relaxed after pressure
>from industry but Madison believes that this may have driven the
>NSA to find ways to carry out surveillance. "They're not going to
>give in over exporting strong cryptography without getting something
>in return," he says.
>
>The NSA carries out the US government's intelligence gathering
>operations. It is known to gather information from Internet traffic.
>It is possible for programmers to put secret capabilities into the
>code used to build programs that are difficult to detect. Software
>companies including Microsoft have in the past been accused of
>colluding with the NSA to provide backdoors into their applications.
>
>Open source software, which publishes the underlying source code
>with a finished application, is by contrast entirely transparent.
>This has caused some foreign governments including the French
>administration to take an interest in open source solutions.
>
>According to Madison, evidence of the FBI's controversial Carnivore
>email surveillance tool shows that NSA technology is finding its
>way into other law enforcement departments. He predicts that similar
>surveillance tools may be applied to other technologies including
>biometrics and smart cards and used track the movements of individuals.
>"These are new intelligence targets," he says. Madison warns that
>government agencies often have a significant role in the development
>of standards for new technologies.
>
>The London forum saw presentations from a host of experts on
>government surveillance technology including Duncan Campbell, famous
>for his work on Echelon, and Tony Bunyan of Statewatch.
>
>
>
>



%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%