From: nobody@REPLAY.COM (Anonymous)
Date: Sat, 21 Mar 1998 20:33:38 -0800 (PST)
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Prologue 9/0 -- SPACE ALIENS HIDE MY DRUGS
Message-ID: <199803220433.FAA28959@basement.replay.com>
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Prologue 9/0 -- SPACE ALIENS HIDE MY DRUGS
------------------------------------------

Magic Circle:

Writing from his room in the Grand Hotel Principe in Limone Piemonte, 
Jones thanked his old friend for the words of encouragement. The honor,
said Sir Eric, "has been won by a lot of hard work by very many people
within the circle and on the fringes of it, and it has also been partly
won by friendly cooperation from people." 


Parker Paradox:

Representing GCHQ at NSA during the mid-1960s was Reginald H. Parker, 
a dashing Englishman with an infectious sense of humor.


Early Members of the Circle of Eunuchs:

Official eavesdropping in Britain is steeped in tradition and shrouded 
in secrecy. Even Shakespeare made note of the practice when he wrote in 
Henry V, "The king hath note of all that they intend / By interception 
which they dream not of." 

Britain's Royal Mail Openers managed a charmed existence. Their single 
public scandal occurred in 1844, when Joseph Mazzini charged Secretary 
of State Sir James Graham with opening his letters and passing the 
contents on to the Neapolitan government.

John Goldhammer of Commercial Cable Company and Clarence H. Mackay of
Commercial Cable Postal Telegraph Company. "In July, 1919," explained
Goldhammer, "when British censorship ceased, we were ordered by the 
British Government to turn over to them all messages passing between 
our own offices, 10 days after they were sent." 

The original and primary source for information on ECHELON is an 
article I wrote in New Statesman magazine ten years ago : NS, 12 August 
1988 : "They've got it taped".  

To forge this alliance, the NSA, soon after it was formed, established 
the National Security Agency Scientific Advisory Board (NSASAB), a 
ten-member panel of science wizards plucked from ivy-covered campuses,
corporate research labs, and sheepskin-lined think tanks. 
Among the early members of the board was Stewart S. Cairns, who had 
earned his doctorate at Harvard and was chairman of the mathematics 
department at the University of Illinois at Urbana (the same school 
where William Martin, not long before his defection, would be sent on 
a two-year scholarship).

When Vice Admiral Laurence Frost arrived at the Puzzle Palace in the 
fall of 1960, he found relations between the board and NSA strained and 
bitter. 


I LUV FUD! (The Medium is the Enemy):

In 1956 Dr. Howard T. Engstrom, a computer wizard and vice president of 
Remington Rand, took over NSA's research and development organization. 
The following year he was appointed deputy director of NSA and a year
later returned to Remington Rand. 

Joseph H. Ream, executive vice president at CBS, was imported to 
replace Engstrom as deputy director. He, too, left after a year; he 
headed up CBS's Washington office and later CBS-TV's programming 
department.
Ream's interlude at NSA is listed on his CBS biography simply as 
"retirement." 

Three months before Ream gave up codebreaking for "I Love Lucy," one of 
the most important meetings in the history of the Agency took place in 
a clapboard structure on Arlington Hall Station known as B Building. On 
July 18, 1957, a handful of the nation's top scientists crowded 
together in NSA's windowless Situation Room to present a blueprint for 
the Agency's future technological survival.* 


Nuclear PigLatin:

They...recommended the initiation of a Manhattan Project-like effort to 
push the USA well ahead of the Soviet Union and all other nations in 
the application of communications, computer science, mathematics, and 
information theory to cryptology.


Rear Entry:

Now the decision had to be made about whether to continue funding, as 
with Lightning, generalized, public research or to begin to direct 
those funds toward secret, specialized, cryptologic research. It was a 
choice between an open bridge or a hidden tunnel between the Agency and 
the outside scientific community. Following the Baker report, the 
decision was to use the tunnel.


Lost Alamo Chaos:

The CRD's statistics are, however, a bit misleading. Shortly after the 
division's birth, several programs were launched to bring into the 
secret fraternity several dozen of the nation's most outstanding 
academic minds in mathematics and languages.


The Evil One Writes Black Operatives A Blank Check:

"NSA," the Agency declared with all due modesty, "certainly hastened 
the start of the computer age." Among the early products of that age 
was the use of computers in the banking industry for everything from 
the massive transfers of money between banks and other financial 
institutions, to the simple recording of a midnight transaction at a 
remote automatic teller. But there was another product: computer crime. 
With sufficient knowledge and the access to a terminal, one could trick 
the computer into transferring funds into a dummy account or tickle a 
cash-dispensing machine into disgorging its considerable holdings. 


Caveat Emptor [WAS: Of course I luvs you...I fucks you, don't I?]:

IBM board chairman Thomas Watson, Jr., during the late 1960s set up a 
cryptology research group at IBM's research laboratory in Yorktown 
Heights, New York. Led by Horst Feistel, the research group concluded 
its work in 1971 with the development of a cipher code-named Lucifer, 
which it promptly sold to Lloyd's of London for use in a 
cash-dispensing system that IBM had developed. 

IBM developed Lucifer with a key 128 bits long. But before it submitted 
the cipher to the NBS, it mysteriously broke off more than half the 
key. 


Government Encryption...There's A Method In Their Madness:

>From the very beginning, the NSA had taken an enormous interest in 
Project Lucifer. It had even indirectly lent a hand in the development 
of the S-box structures.


Debbie Does Ca$h:

The Agency, in turn, certified the algorithm as "free of any 
statistical or mathematical weaknesses" and recommended it as the best 
candidate for the nation's Data Encryption Standard (DES). 


DC Does Chelsea:

The cozy relationship that the Agency had fostered with IBM would be
impossible with the free-wheeling academics. Nevertheless, virtually 
all the researchers had an Achilles' heel: the National Science 
Foundation. 


D'Shauneaux Does DC:

Vice Admiral Bobby Inman moved into the Puzzle Palace, replacing newly 
promoted General Lew Allen, Jr.


Fear:

Without any authorization, he wrote a threatening letter to the 
Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), the nation's 
largest professional engineering society (of which he was a member), 
warning that those planning to participate in an upcoming IEEE 
symposium on cryptology might violate the law. 

Uncertainty:
What Meyer emphasized was that ITAR covered the export not only of 
actual hardware, but also of unclassified technical data associated 
with the restricted equipment. 

Disinformation:
He claimed that holding symposia and publishing papers on cryptology 
were the same as exporting the information. Thus, he concluded, "unless 
clearances or export licenses are obtained" on some of the lectures and 
papers, "the IEEE could find itself in technical violation of the 
ITAR." 


"When time is of essence, he'll rise from the ash.":

Nicolai had suddenly been assaulted with one of the oldest weapons in 
the nation's national security arsenal: the Invention Secrecy Act. 
Passed in 1917 as a wartime measure to prevent the publication of 
inventions that might "be detrimental to the public safety or defense 
or might assist the enemy or endanger the successful prosecution
of the war," the measure ended with the conclusion of World War I. The 
act was resurrected in 1940 and was later extended until the end of the 
Second World War. Then, like the phoenix, it once again rose from the 
ashes with the passage of the Invention Secrecy Act of 1951, which 
mandated that secrecy orders be kept for periods of no more than one 
year unless renewed. There was a catch, however. The act also said that 
a secrecy order "in effect, or issued, during a national emergency 
declared by the President shall remain in effect for the duration of
the national emergency and six months thereafter." Because no one ever 
bothered to declare an end to President Truman's 1951 emergency, the 
emergency remained in effect until September 1978. 


The Zimmermann Lineage:

To add insult to injury, Nicolai was planning to market his Phasorphone 
at a price most buyers could easily afford, about $100, thus increasing 
the interest in the technology. 


Ted Turner Loves Lucy, Too:

The director's tactic was to launch a counterattack on two fronts--one 
in the open and the other behind the scenes. On the open front, Inman 
decided to convert to his own use what he believed was his opponent's 
biggest weapon: the media. 
Now he himself would begin manipulating the press for the Agency's 
benefit. 


Born Classified/Oppressed/Repressed/Depressed:

But Inman's most telling comment was his statement to Shapley that he 
would like to see the NSA receive the same authority over cryptology 
that the Department of Energy enjoys over research into atomic energy. 
Such authority would grant to NSA absolute "born classified" control 
over all research in any way related to cryptology. 


PGP ProphetSized:

Warned Inman:
     Application of the genius of the American scholarly community to 
     cryptographic and cryptanalytic problems, and widespread 
     dissemination of resulting discoveries, carry the clear risk that 
     some of NSA's cryptanalytic successes will be duplicated, with a 
     consequent improvement of cryptography by foreign targets. No less 
     significant is the risk that cryptographic principles embodied in
     communications security devices developed by NSA will be rendered
     ineffective by parallel nongovernmental cryptologic activity and 
     publication.


Voluntary 'Dog At Large'Fines:

Recognizing the constitutional questions involved in such drastic 
actions, the study group decided on a middle ground: a system of 
voluntary censorship. 


Elvis Assassinated By The Men In Black:

Faurer, addressing a meeting of the IEEE, left little doubt that to 
ignore the Center would be to risk saying good-by to lucrative 
government contracts. "Frankly," the NSA chief warned, "our intention 
is to significantly reward those DOD suppliers who produce the computer 
security products that we need." 


Monkeywrenching Dave Null:

Lack of such cooperation, CIA Deputy Director Inman said at the 
Center's opening, "might lead to a highly undesirable situation where 
private-sector users (e.g., banks, insurance companies) have higher 
integrity systems than the government." 


Voluntary/Mandatory:

As a result of what he called the "hemorrhaging of the country's 
technology," Inman warned a meeting of the American Association for the 
Advancement of Science that "the tides are moving, and moving fast, 
toward legislated solutions that in fact are likely to be much more 
restrictive, not less restrictive, than the "voluntary" censorship 
system of the Study Group. 


[ADVERTISEMENT] Nuclear Hoover Vacume Gets ALL The Dirt:

On the other hand, drug dealers were not the only ones who unwittingly 
found their way into NSA's magnetic-tape library. Also captured were 
the hungry demands of wayward congressmen insisting on bribes from 
foreign governments.


You Have A Right To Be Monitored:
You Have A Right To Be Kept In The Dark:
You Have A Right To No Counsel:

The key to the legislation could have been dreamed up by Franz Kafka: 
the establishment of a supersecret federal court. Sealed away behind a 
cipher-locked door in a windowless room on the top floor of the Justice
Department building, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court is 
most certainly the strangest creation in the history of the federal 
Judiciary.

Almost unheard of outside the inner sanctum of the intelligence 
establishment, the court is like no other. It sits in secret session, 
holds no adversary hearings, and issues almost no public opinions or 
reports. It is listed in neither the Government Organizational Manual 
nor the United States Court Directory and has even tried to keep
its precise location a secret. "On its face," said one legal authority 
familiar with the court, "it is an affront to the traditional American 
concept of justice." 

You Have A Right To Bend Over:

Under such circumstances, it is little wonder that the federal
government has never lost a case before the court.


Legalizing WaterGate:

When the Reagan administration came into office, however, the Justice 
Department argued that the power for foreign intelligence black-bag 
jobs was vested not in the court, but in the inherent authority of the
President. Presiding Judge Hart, in the court's only published opinion, 
agreed. Thus, in rejecting the administration's application for a new 
surreptitious entry, he was in fact going along with the argument of 
the Justice Department. As a result the rejected break-in and all 
subsequent surreptitious entries need no court authorization, only 
presidential approval. 


Rule of Obscurity [WAS: Rule of Law]:

Even more disturbing than the apparent evolution of the surveillance 
court into an Executive Branch rubber stamp are the gaping holes and 
clever wording of the FISA statute, which nearly void it of usefulness. 
Such language, intentional as well as unintentional, permits the NSA to 
rummage at will through the nation's international telecommunications 
network and to target or watch-list any American who happens to step 
foot out of the country. 


The Information Surveillance Highway:

"Electronic surveillance," the statute reads, means "the acquisition by 
an electronic, mechanical, or other surveillance device" of the 
approved targets. But nowhere does the statute define the meaning of 
the key word acquisition. Rather, it is left to NSA to define.


The Inlsaw/Indio Reservation Gambling Gambit:

Thus it is possible for GCHQ to monitor the necessary domestic or 
foreign circuits of interest and pass them on to NSA through the UKUSA 
Agreement. Once they were received, NSA could process the 
communications through its own computers and analysts, targeting and 
watch-listing Americans with impunity, since the action would not be 
covered under the FISA statute or any other law. 


Debbie Does Deputy Dog:

No such exclusion, however, was ever included in the final FISA 
statute. Instead, the statute now calls for what one constitutional law 
expert has termed "compulsory spy service," requiring "communications 
common carriers, their officers, employees, and agents . . . to provide 
information, facilities, or technical assistance to persons
authorized by law to intercept wire or oral communications or to 
conduct electronic surveillance" and also ordering them to protect the 
secrecy of the operations. 


CAMP Revisited / Crypto Uzis for Deputy Dog:

Under the Reagan executive order, the NSA can now, apparently, be 
authorized to lend its full cryptanalytic support--analysts as well as 
computers--to "any department or agency" in the federal government and, 
"when lives are endangered," even to local police departments. 


David Waters Predicts SmartSSNCards:

     Tons of electronic surveillance equipment at this moment are 
     interconnected within our domestic and international common 
     carrier telecommunications systems. Much more is under contract 
     for installation. Perhaps this equipment is humming away in a 
     semi-quiescent state wherein at present "no citizen is targeted"; 
     simply scanned. . . How soon will it be, however, before a punched 
     card will quietly be dropped into the machine, a card having your 
     telephone number, my telephone number, or the number of one of our 
     friends to whom we will be speaking? 


And once we've rid ourselves of those pesky humans...:

"HUMINT [Human Intelligence] is subject to all of the mental 
aberrations of the source as well as the interpreter of the source," 
Lieutenant General Marshall S. Carter once explained. "SIGINT isn't. 
SIGINT has technical aberrations which give it away almost immediately 
if it does not have bona fides, if it is not legitimate. A good
analyst can tell very, very quickly whether this is an attempt at 
disinformation, at confusion, from SIGINT. You can't do that from 
HUMINT; you don't have the bona fides--what are his sources? He may be 
the source, but what are his sources?" 


Chuck Conners Appointed To Supreme Court--Cows Nervous:

Can it be that the Constitution affords no protection against such 
invasions of individual security? * 

     * Justice Brandeis answered his own question when he quoted from 
     Boyd v. United States (116 u.s. 616): "It is not the breaking of 
     his doors, and the rummaging of his drawers that constitutes the 
     essence of the offense; but it is the invasion of his indefensible 
     right of personal security, personal liberty, and private 
     property. (277 U.S.438, at pages 474-475.) 


Army of (Black) Dog / Take A Bite Out Of Technotyranny:

I don't want to see this country ever go across the bridge. I know the 
capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must 
see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this
technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that 
we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there no 
return.