Schneier on Security

Clive Robinson • May 14, 2016 5:33 PM

@ MiddleONoWhere texas,

You missed an opportunity, if you had said,

… the three letter agencies are complaining about going dark while perfecting their night vision googles.

You would have probably got a “+1” 😉

Clive Robinson • May 16, 2016 12:42 AM

@ Anon10,

If you’re arguing for a warrant requirement for metadata, that’s not the case nationally and certainly wasn’t the “default for decades.”

That is because untill very recently it was not called meta-data.

Prior to the rise of the internet, most people communicated via “circuit switched” systems and were billed for the length of time the circuit remained “connected” or “UP” depending on the type of circuit (dial / leased line). That is the “billing record” was the only “meta data” collection, unless a “pen register” wire tap was used.

In most WASP jurisdictions access to “billing records” required a formal proceadure to be activated as did getting authority to install a pen trace at the CO to record dialed numbers. Over and above the effort to get the authority was the effort to get the data and make it usable. This effort had a direct corelation with “man power” and thus had a labour cost implication that acted as a considerable constraint on the use of such collection. Also having humans involved in large numbers made such proceadures very visable to many people thus there was a form of “natural oversight” acting as a limiting factor as well.

But technology removes manpower and cost, thus the proceadures became cheaper, and the likes of CALE came along. But there was still an inbuilt limitation, which was firstly the number and type of leased lines that LE’s could afford and secondly and more importantly how many and what type of LE leased line each switch could support. The law only required one per switch and due to technology cost constraints it was usually just a single bearer channel line. Which created a bottle neck constraint on LE.

It was this sort of technology cost constraint which ment switch designers did not design switches to do anything other than the minimum the telcos would pay for that caused issues in the IC that wanted to do “covert bulk collection” on country entrance and exit points. Various countries went different ways, but back in the 1960’s through to the 1990’s much of the “national trunk” backbone was via microwave link and national entry points for most WASP countries was via undersea cable, satellite or microwave link which all acted as “choke points” where “collect it all” was a realistic posability. Thus the equipment was designed to get at this “trunk data”, much of it by the technical side of the Five Eyes IC working in collaboration with select technical directors and managers in “trusted” telecoms manufacturers. Thus most of the design work appeared to those doing it at lower levels as a normal project development or modification to existing systems. A few of us involved with it smelt a rat but if you talked about such posabilities you found that you got moved on to either other projects, other roles or even finding new employers… Back then these directors and managers were a hang over from WWII and had a “supporting the nation in a crisis” mentaliry as well as an open pocket for the largesse of government that peaked in the 1980’s with Ronnie “Raygun” and “Mad Maggie” Thatcher.

Thus the IC had it’s “collect it all” technology and the LE’s had “a bit of wet string”.

Four things happened, we know from information about Echelon, that the IC were deploying the equipment not just at national entry/exit choke points but at other national trunk backbone points as call levels increased (and terorist tactics changed). The advent of high capacity fibre optics was a serious shakeup, trunk microwave signals were rapidly disapearing due to the lack of capacity and local back haul microwave started to take over due to the start and rapid rise of the mobile phone industry. But also fibre was going into subsea cables which did not have the big delays of geostationary satellites thus calls disappeard from them into the fibre cables. Then there was this thing called ARPANET which started to be of comercial interest, as the centrally planed services by the telcos and politicians proved a mismatch for what companies and individials wanted.

The major issue for the IC was “fibre” they could nolonger covertly “sniff the spill” from the microwave antennas, they had to get into the COs and tap directly onto fibre… People in the telco’s who had the technical knowledge but not the war time mentality “saw somethin.and said something” thus the information leaked out about what the IC was upto. Then “big car syndrome” kicked in with LE, they got to know the size of hose the IC got and in comparison their tiny tiny little bits of damp string were demeaning they had serious envy issues… And it’s around that time that various LE FUD started, the longest running being “going dark”.

We know from simple math that although the IC can “collect it all” and can now “store it all” they still can not “process it all” even if it’s all in plaintext. That is they can not drink from their fire hose sized taps. However they don’t want to admit to that because it might cause the appropriations people to think money for “collect it all” is a waste and quite justifiably cut the funding. What they want is for industry to do what they can not, which is come up with cost effective ways to process the hugh volumes of data. They know as various industry watchers know that it will not be long before “big data” does deliver the level of granularity the IC want, till then the IC need both the information and thus money faucets turned “all the way up to eleven”.

But the LE envey is a bitter and twisted thing, they want “Total Information”, they do not care it is not yet a reality and will not provide actionable evidence they just don’t want to be left out of the power game. Which is why they lie about the number of investigations that have failed due to the use of encryption.

But what realy scares the IC is the knowledge that whilst they might be able to end run around your mobile technology and connected computers, they can not end run past those points… Thus “off line” encryption either via paper and pencil or techology they can not touch will be in effect locking up the treasure they otherwise plunder.

The IC’s greatest assets are “lazyness” and “complacency” in those they seek to listen to. The IC do not want those people to “wake up” because they would then take the steps required to stop the technology end runs the IC increasingly rely on. It’s why the IC are getting increasingly upset about the voiced LE envey of “going dark” because it’s causing the “real scary people” like politicos and their funders to wake up and consider not just “off line encryption” but also how to stop “traffic analysis” on “meta-data” which is the IC fall back position when technology end runs are not possible.

The LEs don’t care about the IC concerns, they are not even concerned about solving crime, all they are interested about are “meeting targets” that politicians set, and lobying those politicians. As for meeting targets, they take the Cardinal Richelieu view on justice, which is having it “be seen to be done” rather than actually ensuring it is done. As evidenced by the “Give me six lines by the hand of the most honest man and within them I will find something with which to hang him” quote.

Put simply LE will catch the stupid and incautious, but not those who can think and deploy sensible OpSec unless thay can be infiltrated and an end run achived around the OpSec (as evidenced by mafia and other serious crime). This leaves the issue of “meeting targets”, well as we have seen with the FBI creating criminals works, but currently takes a lot of resources. Getting access to everybodies meta-data is just an easy way to find potential candidates to be worked on or as they say in the UK “fitted up” in some way or another.

It is this “seen to be done” rather than “being done” that is an ages old provlem, and why we have principles like “fruit of the poisoned vine” and warrants and other judicial oversight. Trust me when I say you do not want to give LEs the ability to “end run judicial oversight” it can only end badly, and giving any access without warrant to meta-data as we now call it is giving just such an end run.