Big Brother IS wtaching you
Frank Adrian
In article <8...@vax2.fluke.UUCP> mori...@fluke.UUCP (Jeff Meyer) writes:
>Anyway, even though the White House isn't reading it, the NSA (CIA?
>S.H.I.E.L.D.?) is probably poring through it :-).
What do you mean probably (and by the :-))?!?!?! As far as I know,
the NSA intercepts ALL message traffic which passes in and out of the country.
Since USENET goes to Canada (those horrible enemies of democracy to the North)
and to Europe and Australia (you know, the ones with the funny accents who
don't always agree with us), you can bet your ass the NSA is watching (look
out, Piet, we got a list). Have fun guys, but if you want to start a real
plot, you better not use USENET.
"Remember, wherever you happen to be --
you're already there"
Frank Adrian
___
/- -\
\ - /
uucp: {decvax,pur-ee,cbosg,ihnss}!tektronix!teklds!franka
CSnet: franka@tek
ARPAnet: franka.tek@rand-relay
Tai Jin
then i realized that they just don't have the resources (manpower) to bother
with it. there's so much other message traffic elsewhere of more importance
that they don't have time for useless net mail.
FarleighSE
From what I have heard, NSA keys on certain words in a transmission,
if these words show-up they then read the entire text.
.
Can anyone out there verify my information? That is without the
U.S. version of the KGB knocking at their door.
.
. Scott E. Farleigh
. AT&TIS Denver
Doug Faunt
traffic. After all, it all goes in and out of ONE VAX, with time left
over to do some real work. I am of course refering to USENET. The rest
of the uucp traffic is certainly not that much more.
--
...!hplabs!faunt faunt%hplabs@csnet-relay
HP is in no way responsible for anything I say here.
In fact, it may have been generated by a noisy 'phone line.
My entry for official theme music of the net: "Chariots of Fire"
Ron McDaniels
>
>In article <8...@vax2.fluke.UUCP> mori...@fluke.UUCP (Jeff Meyer) writes:
>>Anyway, even though the White House isn't reading it, the NSA (CIA?
>>S.H.I.E.L.D.?) is probably poring through it :-).
>
> What do you mean probably (and by the :-))?!?!?!
>
> As far as I know,
>
>the NSA intercepts ALL message traffic which passes in and out of the country.
>Since USENET goes to Canada (those horrible enemies of democracy to the North)
>and to Europe and Australia (you know, the ones with the funny accents who
>don't always agree with us), you can bet your ass the NSA is watching (look
>out, Piet, we got a list). Have fun guys, but if you want to start a real
>plot, you better not use USENET.
>
As far as ***I*** know, you don't know what you're talking about. One conspiricy
Theory is as good as another. I think the Russians are intercepting all YOUR
traffic. So there.
R. L. (Ron) McDaniels
{decvax || ucbvax || ihnp4 || akgua || philabs}!sdcsvax!celerity!ron
> ___
> /o x\
> \ - /
>
N.B. The above quoted article has been carefully altered to emphasize the
authors lack of clear thought and blatent appeal to the paranoia that
exists in all of us.
John M Sellens
You'll probably be hearing from the NSA. If they key on anything, I bet
they key on ``NSA'' and ``KGB'' -- they'll probably by keying on
``Scott E. Farleigh'' from now on too ...
:-) <-- Do I really have to be this obvious???
John M Sellens
UUCP: {decvax|utzoo|ihnp4|allegra|clyde}!watmath!jmsellens
CSNET: jmsellens%wat...@waterloo.csnet
ARPA: jmsellens%watmath%waterlo...@csnet-relay.arpa
The Napoleon of Crime
>They certainly have the resources to do key-word searches on all the net
>traffic.
You mean, all I have to type in is "Commie"...
WHOOPS! Wait, guys! TIME OUT! THIS IS ONLY A DRILL! REPEAT! THIS IS...
"Even though the prospect sickens, Brother, here we go again..."
-Also Tom Lehrer (I posted the whole song to the net last year...)
Moriarty, aka Jeff Meyer
John Fluke Mfg. Co., Inc.
UUCP:
{cornell,decvax,ihnp4,sdcsvax,tektronix,utcsrgv}!uw-beaver \
{allegra,gatech!sb1,hplabs!lbl-csam,decwrl!sun,ssc-vax} -- !fluke!moriarty
ARPA:
fluke!mori...@uw-beaver.ARPA
Brad Templeton
sure that the volume is far far too large for them to do so.
When you consider that the USA and Canada are largest international
traders in the world (yup, you guys buy and sell more from Canada than
any other nation, including Japan and England) and that they have what
are probably the two most advanced and connected phone systems in the
world, and that they have close to the longest border in the world, it
all adds up to a lot of phone calls.
Now the usenet traffic to Europe, that's another story. They supposedly
do listen to those calls, and I guess they might even decode modems - it
makes their job easier for us to send it all in machine readable form!
I wonder what would happen if we stuck encryption on the trans-atlantic
link? Would there be some curious counter-intelligence forces (their only
descriptive name) poking around within minutes?
--
Brad Templeton, Looking Glass Software Ltd. - Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473
Ron Natalie <ron>
> From what I have heard, NSA keys on certain words in a transmission,
> if these words show-up they then read the entire text.
> .
My question is if NSA is monitoring all my phone conversations, why
can't they take messages for me. I should be able to come home, pick
up my phone and say "OK, Mr. Spook, do I have any messages...
-Ron
J.BOKOR
of the NSA. They have a budget which is kept secret from the
*president* himself. They won't tell him because they're afraid
Stockman will find out. You better believe they're listening
to everything, including encrypted messages especially.
Crypto-freaks out there back me up on this...the NSA has even been
known to certify encryption methods as "safe" for use by the general
community, which they have themselves cracked so that *they* can then
monitor the "secret" public traffic.
"Never underestimate the power of a schnook." - Boris Badunov, World's
Greatest Nogoodnik
Donald Eastlake
reason, you don't have to hypothesize about cross border stuff, NSA
probably has at least one direct news feed from somewhere or other.
(2) For other stuff, don't forget that under the relevant federal court
decisions interpreting the federal wiretap statute, it is NOT a
violation of this statute to tap machine readable text conversation.
This was apparently partly based on the pen recorder decisions which
make it NOT federal wire taping to record the numbers called from a
phone (which is somewhat analogous to it not being a "search" to record
the outsides, including to and from addresses of mial). On the other
hand, it is obviously a violation to tap analog voice conversations (and
presumably directly digitized conversations, although this has not come
up yet in court).
--
+ Donald E. Eastlake, III
ARPA: dee@CCA-UNIX usenet: {decvax,linus}!cca!dee
ix241
> link? Would there be some curious counter-intelligence forces (their only
> descriptive name) poking around within minutes?
> --
> Brad Templeton, Looking Glass Software Ltd. - Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473
Only to see if the algorithm is neat. You forget NSA does the codes for
*everything* that the government wants to encrypt.
John Testa
UCSD Chemistry
sdcsvax!sdcc6!ix241
Bruce Walker
> You mean, all I have to type in is "Commie"...
>
> WHOOPS! Wait, guys! TIME OUT! THIS IS ONLY A DRILL! REPEAT! THIS IS...
>
> Moriarty, aka Jeff Meyer
> John Fluke Mfg. Co., Inc.
Don't worry, Moriarty, I happen to know that anything in quotes or comment
delimiters is ignored by the "NSA" keyword searcher.
Now if they were using grep ...
"Bruce Walker {allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!aesat!bmw"
J.STEKAS
> to everything, including encrypted messages especially.
To monitor "everything", the NSA would have to be doing keyword searches
on about 10^12 bps of data during the busy hours of each business day.
Figuring that each byte of data needs at least 8 clock cycles to process,
that translates into more than 10^6 MIPS worth of processing. That's
about 1000 Crays and we haven't even begun to talk about encrypted data
(and won't all the interesting stuff be encryted) or the network that
ties them to the telephone network.
Considering what it cost the Bell System to put together a network
which could recognize the numbers 0-9 and close the right relays,
it is impossible to believe that the NSA could be doing speach recognition
on EVERY line.
Jim
John Collins
Or is the problem with people plugging into the phone line?
--
John Collins calling courtesy of ist
Please reply to ...!mcvax!ist!inset!jmc
Phone: +44 727 57267
Snail: 47 Cedarwood Drive, St Albans, Herts, AL4 0DN, England
J.BOKOR
>> of the NSA. ... You better believe they're listening
>> to everything, including encrypted messages especially.
>...that translates into more than 10^6 MIPS worth of processing. That's
>about 1000 Crays and we haven't even begun to talk about encrypted data...
>...it is impossible to believe that the NSA could be doing speach (sic)
>recognition on EVERY line.
Oh, come on, grow up! (-:) First of all, 1000 Crays is a gross
everestimate of the expense of carrying out such surveillance.
Be creative! This is a *highly* parallel problem. You want a
tremendous number of identical pattern recognition machines. Think VLSI.
I concede that they can't handle the speech traffic, but don't be so
quick to dismiss the possibility of large scale electronic data
surveillance. I also concede that they don't listen to absolutely
*EVERYTHING*, they have to be selective.
Also, don't think that the NSA are the only ones out there listening,
there's also the Soviets and the Japanese to think about, just to name two.
Walt Pesch
(-: In article <25...@saturn.UUCP> fa...@saturn.UUCP (Doug Faunt) writes:
(-: >They certainly have the resources to do key-word searches on all the net
(-: >traffic.
(-:
(-: You mean, all I have to type in is "Commie"...
(-: Moriarty, aka Jeff Meyer
After pondering this for a few seconds, I come up with some other
words that the NSA look for (alphabetized so as to not show precedence):
Fornication /* something only communists do
Hart /* a known communist sympathiser
Homophobic /* a definate communist slander
Perlow /* a known godless communist
Ray-gun /* indicator of a critic of the Savoir of our Nation
San Francisco /* home of US Communism
Wombat /* communism the least of this critter's crimes
And while we are at it, some words that they grep for at kremvax:
Dixie /* home of patriotism
Geronimo /* keyword saying that US encryption algorithms follow
VAX /* they learn enough they might be able to build one
Wheeler /* known capitalist pig
And of course both of them key on "Jeff Sargent", whose known
insecurities make it so that neither knows who's side he is on (but
neither does he.)
Walt Pesch
AT&T Technologies
ihnp4!ihuxp!wbpesch
This is to serious for any group but net.flame or net.rec.wood
- most certainly not for net.politics
J. A. Biep Durieux
>> if these words show-up they then read the entire text.
>> U.S. version of the KGB knocking at their door.
Does anyone know some of these words? I want to put as many as possible in
my .signature!
--
Biep.
{seismo|decvax|philabs}!mcvax!vu44!botter!klipper!biep
I utterly disagree with everything you are saying, but I
am prepared to fight to the death for your right to say it.
--Voltaire
John McNally
>> link? Would there be some curious counter-intelligence forces (their only
>> descriptive name) poking around within minutes?
>Only to see if the algorithm is neat. You forget NSA does the codes for
>*everything* that the government wants to encrypt.
>John Testa UCSD Chemistry sdcsvax!sdcc6!ix241
I think that Brad's idea is a good one. But, I think that John is
misinformed. This is my understanding of things (not guaranteed
correct):
The government surely knows how to crack the DES (Data Encryption
Standard) easily, which they (of course) encourage everyone to use
because (so the argument goes) it has been shown to be secure.
Here, secure means than any attacker will expend far more
resources cracking the code than the value of any info obtained.
I believe that DES uses a 51 bit code???
(the technical content of the following is certainly correct):
However, using RSA public-key cryptography, I could encode a
message that would give the NSA fits. RSA is based upon the
intractability (to date) of the prime factoring problem. If I use
an 800 bit key (the product of two large primes) a lot of
computational power must be expended in finding the key's prime
factors (admittedly, I would have to expend a bit of computing
power encoding the message, but nowhere near what is required to
crack it). There are just too many big primes and they are hard
as hell to find. I do admit though that they will try and they
will eventually succeed.
Maybe Piet or some of those other mellow fellows in Amsterdam
would like to give it a try. Given their political inclinations,
they will certainly trigger the NSA attention. My only questions:
Will we ever know anything about it and will anyone care when I
disappear???
--
John McNally Calma 11080 Roselle St. San Diego CA 92121
...{ucbvax,decvax}!sdcsvax!calmasd!jpm (619)-458-3230
Bill Dietrich
Of course, the way to react to this communication monitoring
is by routinely including, in every letter and article you
send, a few words like NSA, KGB, CIA, etc.
Bill Dietrich
houxj!wapd
jh...@spp2.uucp
>> ... if we stuck encryption on the link...Would there be some
>> counter-intelligence poking around ...
>> Brad Templeton
>
>Only to see if the algorithm is neat. ...
>John Testa
And to find out what you think is worth protecting. Spooks want to
know EVERYTHING that ANYONE wants to hide. Such stuff is their stock
in trade...
Blessed Be,
jh...@spp2.UUCP Jeff Hull
trwspp!spp2!jh...@trwrb.UUCP 13817 Yukon Ave.
Hawthorne, CA 90250
--
Blessed Be,
jh...@spp2.UUCP Jeff Hull
trwspp!spp2!jh...@trwrb.UUCP 13817 Yukon Ave.
Hawthorne, CA 90250
Chris Torek
> > link? Would there be some curious counter-intelligence forces (their
> > only descriptive name) poking around within minutes?
> Only to see if the algorithm is neat. You forget NSA does the codes for
> *everything* that the government wants to encrypt.
To make things even more interesting, we could intersperse total garbage
with real text. Then again, considering*, maybe we already do! :-)
--------
*especially considering this message
--
(This line accidently left nonblank.)
In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci Dept (301) 454-7690
UUCP: {seismo,allegra,brl-bmd}!umcp-cs!chris
CSNet: chris@umcp-cs ARPA: chris@maryland
Piet Beertema
> From what I have heard, NSA keys on certain words in a transmission,
> if these words show-up they then read the entire text.
> U.S. version of the KGB knocking at their door.
--
Piet Beertema, CWI, Amsterdam
...{seismo,decvax,philabs}!mcvax!piet
Greg J Kuperberg
> to everything, including encrypted messages especially.
Yeah, I heard they really go for the ROT13 jokes...
In fact, I found a NSA agent hiding under my bed just the other day.
---
Greg Kuperberg
harvard!talcott!gjk
"Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system
of government." -Monty Python
John Quarterman
The Puzzle Palace (A Report on America's Most Secret Agency)
James Bamford
Houghton Mifflin Company Boston
Copyright (c) 1982 by V. James Bamford
ISBN 0-395-31286-8
--
John Quarterman, CS Dept., University of Texas, Austin, Texas 78712 USA
j...@ut-sally.ARPA, j...@ut-sally.UUCP, {ihnp4,seismo,ctvax}!ut-sally!jsq
Spyridon Triantafyllopoulos
"intelligent agents" and the full time 007's, try mailing
some incombrehensible output (such as a nice 'a.out' or an APL
program) overseas... I really want to see 'em adb the whole thing
trying to get the keywords!!
Spiros Triantafyllopoulos
Computer Science Department
University of Southwestern Louisiana
{ut-sally, akgua}!usl!sigma
Juha I. Heinanen
recommended using phone to get to the free world on the other side of
Atlantic. Unfortunately even that doesn't work as we have just heard.
The next step is to travel there yourself. Do it today since tomorrow
they may decide to erase your memory before you cross the border.
Juha Heinanen
{ut-sally, akgua}!usl!jih
Kreilick
Dear Biep,
I am glad you finally corrected your quote. I am assuming that you
are not really dead. Here are some of the words you wanted.
"Marxist" "KGB" "Kremlin"
"marxist" "liberal"
"Democrat", and permutations thereof
"pinko" "Fritz" "Gerry"
"NSA" "Amphibian Defender"
"flea" "glue" "TRUTH"
"gnat" "tap" "Tip"
"fag" "queer" "San Francisco"
"coercion" "ACLU" "NOW"
"Romulus" "Bella" "Libertarian"
The names of all South American countries
While this is not the complete list (there are three or four more
we didn't have room for) it will get you started. Best of Luck.
TRUTH
P.S.
Just write if you the word lists for any other organizations.
We have them all.
--
Amphibian Stomper
gree...@acf4.uucp
Ya know, I'm sorta new to the net....(about eight months?).
Could somebody feel me in on this aforementioned "kremvax" affair??
Ross M. Greenberg @ NYU ----> allegra!cmcl2!acf4!greenber <----
Henry Polard
>In article <18...@sdcc6.UUCP> ix...@sdcc6.UUCP (ix241) writes:
>>> ... if we stuck encryption on the link...Would there be some
>>> counter-intelligence poking around ...
>>> Brad Templeton
>>
>>Only to see if the algorithm is neat. ...
>>John Testa
>And to find out what you think is worth protecting. Spooks want to
>know EVERYTHING that ANYONE wants to hide. Such stuff is their stock
>in trade...
Let's spook the spooks - we'll encrypt net.jokes, then net.religion,
and to be really cruel, net.(shudder)flame! :-)
--
Henry Polard (You bring the flames - I'll bring the marshmallows.)
{ihnp4,cbosgd,amd}!fortune!polard
N.B: The words in this posting do not necessarily express the opinions
of me, my employer, or any AI project.
Baba ROM DOS
> >> of the NSA. ... You better believe they're listening
> >> to everything, including encrypted messages especially.
>
> >...that translates into more than 10^6 MIPS worth of processing. That's
> >about 1000 Crays and we haven't even begun to talk about encrypted data...
>
> everestimate of the expense of carrying out such surveillance.
> Be creative! This is a *highly* parallel problem. You want a
> tremendous number of identical pattern recognition machines. Think VLSI.
Well, I always liked the story that the *real* reason that IBM shut down
it's Josephson junction project was that it had delivered the specified
number of systems to the NSA and was fulfilling the final clause in the
contract.
Baba
jh...@spp2.uucp
>> I am amazed at the naivete of those who underestimate the capacity
>> of the NSA. ... You better believe they're listening
>> to everything, including encrypted messages especially.
>>...that translates into more than 10^6 MIPS worth of processing. That's
>>about 1000 Crays and we haven't even begun to talk about encrypted data...
>First of all, 1000 Crays is a gross overestimate ...
>I also concede that they don't listen to absolutely
>*EVERYTHING*, they have to be selective.
The basic procedure is:
1) Listen to everything you can.
2) Place each data source in a category by how interesting
it is, i.e., how often it will be scanned fully in the
future
3) Use the capacity released by 2 to scan something else.
Make the scanning frequency assignments of 2 such that
every data source gets scanned at least once and at least
sometime after that
Here, we are only referring to digital traffic. Analog traffic is
something else entirely, but the basic procedure is similar.
>You can bet they stopped those practices after the "kremvax" affair....
>
> Piet Beertema, CWI, Amsterdam
>... something a public as "news" ...
>(2) For other stuff, ... under the relevant federal court
>decisions interpreting the federal wiretap statute, ...
> + Donald E. Eastlake, III
You can ABSOLUTELY count on monitoring continuing today and probably
forever, regardless of what the courts say. I don't know what "those
practices" are.
d...@petrus.uucp
--
David H. Copp
Richard Caley
> From > flame!qtlon!ukc!mcvax!seismo!hao!hplabs!tektronix!uw-beaver!cornell!
> vax135!ho uxm!houxf!1314jb Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970
> From: 131...@houxf.UUCP (J.BOKOR)
>
> You better believe they're listening to everything, including
> encrypted messages especially.
Hey! I'm moveing all my foul pinko gay subversive commie plots to
net.jokes :-) <- Just in case.
--
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
"In the beginning was a flame ...... "
Paul Kantner.
.......... mcvax!ukc!flame!ubu!rjc
[ Any opinions in the above crawled in while I wasn't looking ]
rowley
()
In reference to both the NSA and kremvax, words to make them both stand up
and take notice:
-PEACE> permanent state of non-agression
-SANITY> state counter to state directives
-EQUALITY> Oh GOD! not this again!!
-NUCLEAR FREEZE> aaaaaarrrrrrgggggghhhhh!!
:-):-):-):-)
This is only my humble opinion, not to be confused with others.
A. J. Rowley
Sean Casey
They don't call it FLAME for nuthin.
Greg Kuperberg
> and take notice:
> -PEACE> permanent state of non-agression
> -SANITY> state counter to state directives
> -EQUALITY> Oh GOD! not this again!!
> -NUCLEAR FREEZE> aaaaaarrrrrrgggggghhhhh!!
> A. J. Rowley
I doubt that the NSA uses any of the ridiculous (and dangerous)
mumbo-jumbo found in military planning circles. This is because the NSA
doesn't do any military planning. They probably have some funny technical
terms about coding schemes, though.
---
Greg Kuperberg
harvard!talcott!gjk
" " -Charlie Chaplin, for IBM
Ray Holmes
r...@wjvax.uucp
big bucks factoring the primes of an encrypted transatlantic
submission and never figured out that the scheme was rot13??
--
Ron Christian (Watkins-Johnson Co. San Jose, Calif.)
{pesnta,twg,ios,qubix,turtlevax,tymix}!wjvax!ron
Erik E. Fair
>> Date: Tue, 18-Dec-84 17:40:18 PST
>> Organization: Watkins Johnson, San Jose, Calif.
>>
>> Wouldn't it be a gass if the government (any government) spent
>> big bucks factoring the primes of an encrypted transatlantic
>> submission and never figured out that the scheme was rot13??
>> --
Actually, I believe that decvax is compressing news going over the
trans-atlantic link (with compact) so in a sense, it is already
encrypted (to anyone who doesn't know what a Huffman encoding scheme
looks like)...
Erik E. Fair ucbvax!fair fa...@ucb-arpa.ARPA
dual!fa...@BERKELEY.ARPA
{ihnp4,ucbvax,cbosgd,hplabs,decwrl,unisoft,fortune,sun,nsc}!dual!fair
Dual Systems Corporation, Berkeley, California
Randy King
Give me a break. Most this crap never makes it past a few machines before
some old decrepid uucp system farts and blows the bytes all over the floor.
In order for the NSA to watch all this stuff, they gotta *get* it. We'll
make sure they get a real noisy line so that uucico retransmits a bunch.
Ha, they probably think we only have 4 newsgroups. What?
Randy King
AT&T-CP@MG
ihnp4!mgweed!rjk
David Herron, NPR Lover
> Subject: Re: Big Brother IS wtaching you - cross border phone traffic
> Message-ID: <2...@wjvax.UUCP>
> Date: Tue, 18-Dec-84 20:40:18 EST
> Wouldn't it be a gass if the government (any government) spent
> big bucks factoring the primes of an encrypted transatlantic
> submission and never figured out that the scheme was rot13??
This reminds me of a book that Heinlein wrote once. Most of the people
on Venus were indentured workers. Some of the workers had escaped and
were out in the jungles planning some sort of revolt. Our hero is
a lawyer who had signed up as a bet with one of his rich drinking buddies.
He happens to be an excellent amateur radio operator, and eventually
joins with the revolutionists. They have problems with radio communications,
the authorities keep hearing them. He dredges up a memory of an OLD
archaic radio method called "Amplitude Modulation" (These people are
so advanced they only have FM, and have never heard of AM). AM is
invisible to the bad guys so the good guys win because they can now
communicate with no problems.
--:--:--:--:--:--:--:--:--:--:--:--:--:--:--:--:--:--:--:--:--:--:--:--:-
David Herron; ARPA-> "ukma!david"@ANL-MCS
(Try the arpa address w/ and w/o the quotes, I have had much trouble with both.)
UUCP -:--:--:--:--:--:--:--:--:- (follow one of these routes)
{ucbvax,unmvax,boulder,research} ! {anlams,anl-mcs} -----\ vvvvvvvvvvv
>-!ukma!david
{cbosgd!hasmed,mcvax!qtlon,vax135,mddc} ! qusavx -----/ ^^^^^^^^^^^