Catching up on how to lawfully intercept in the digital era

In one of my previous posts "A top level espionage case in Greece" I blogged about two cases of unlawful interception -- good old espionage practices in modern environment. What's also worth mentioning is the rush for lawful interception in the post 9/11 world, that is free spirits get detained for singing or being nerds, activities you can hardly datamine at the bottom line, and then again, so what?


Last month, Australia extended its phone-tap laws to e-mails and SMS, OMG, good morning Vietnam. An excerpt from the news item :



"Australia has passed new laws that would allow police to intercept phone calls, e-mails, and text messages of people who are just suspected of a crime. Attorney-General Philip Ruddock says the new laws account for challenges posed by technology; in December 2005, Middle Eastern and white supremacist youth used SMS messages to coordinate during race riots. However, civil liberties groups warn that the laws could allow police to target the privileged conversations of lawyers and journalists or to target innocent people for investigation. Australia has been tightening security laws since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the US."



Whether compliance, or new revenue sources from a telecom/network giant's point of view, lawful interception has always been happening. A single vendor's box can easily monitor over 30,000 DSL connections, and while the problem still remains processing power and decentralized/encrypted communications, steganography as a concept has always been the biggest downsize of any approach from my point of view.



At the bottom line it would eventually provide the ECHELON's community with more information to take hold of, whereas retaining or trying to data mine it still remains an abstract concept whose only justification has been the contradictive Able Danger scenario. It is my opinion that erasing terrabytes of intelligence information on a terrorist group is a pure science-fiction scenario, they way there's a desperate need for a clear ROI in respect to CCTV cameras.



Don't over-empower the watchers for the sake of your Security, or you'll end up with a false feeling of it.



More resources on surveillance and lawful interception worth going through are :

International Campaign Against Mass Surveillance
Development of surveillance technology and risk of abuse of economic information
Legal Analysis of the NSA Domestic Surveillance Program
Wiretapping, FISA, and the NSA
Can the government track your cell phone's location without probable cause?
Attack Detection Methods for All-Optical Networks
2006 = 1984?
Privacy issues related to mobile and wireless Internet access
Lawful Interception of the Internet
Using MAC Addresses in the Lawful Interception of IP Traffic
Open Source Intelligence (OSINT)
Making Intelligence Accountable: Legal Standards and Best Practice for Oversight of Intelligence Agencies
What is Project ECHELON?
Surveillance and Society Journal
Cybercrime in New Network Ecosystem: vulnerabilities and new forensic capabilities
Strategies for Lawful Intercept
Summary - Lawful Interception plugtest
Whistle-Blower Outs NSA Spy Room



Technorati tags:
Security, Intelligence, Surveillance, Wiretapping, Privacy, Lawful Interception

"IM me" a strike order

In my previous post "What's the potential of the IM security market? Symantec thinks big" I commented on various IM market security trends, namely Symantec's acquisition of IMLogic. It's also worth mentioning how a market leader security vendor was able to quickly capitalize on the growing IM market, and turn the acquisition into a valuable solution on the giant's portfolio of solutions. What's also worth mentioning is the military interest in instant communications in today's network centric warfare powered battlefield. Today I across an interesting recent development, namely that :



"The US Army, Navy, and Air Force have deployed protected interoperable instant messaging (IM) systems among the threebranches. Army Knowledge Online, Navy Knowledge Online, and theAir Force’s Knowledge Management Portal built the IM systems for 3.5 million users from Bantu's Inter-domain Messaging (IDM)gateway, a policy-driven with role-based access controls. The system will carry messages over sensitive and secret networks, and can populate a user's contact list with appropriate officials in the chain of command. Intelligence agencies will hook into the system to work with the military, and the Department of Homeland Security is also interested in the IM system."



Flexible military communications have always been of great importance, and flexibility here stands for securely communicating over insecure channels -- IP based communications. While you might have not heard of Bantu before, to me their real-time network for interagency communication sounds more like a security through obscurity approach -- temporary gain and possible long term disaster.

Could the instant communication finally solve the Intelligence Community's information sharing troubles?


In a relatively recent report I came across, "a survey was hosted on the Secret Internet Protocol Router Network (SIPRNET) so that personnel could respond to the survey from the convenience and privacy of their own workstations." in order to measure the communication requirements of various staff members, some of the findings worth mentioning :



MS Chat was used by at least 50% of all command groups
- 100% of Afloat Staffs, 86% of Carriers, 78% of Cruisers & Destroyers, 50% of Support
XIRCON was used by 28% - 50% of command groups
- 50% of Support, 41% of Carriers, 32% of Cruisers & Destroyers, 28% of Afloat Staffs
Lotus Sametime was used by 0 – 44% of command groups
- 44% of Afloat Staffs, 16% of Cruisers & Destroyers, 10% of Carriers, 0% of Support
mIRC was used by 13 – 33% of command groups
- 33% of Support, 23% of Carriers, 22% of Cruisers & Destroyers, 13% of Afloat Staffs



Lotus Sametime and mIRC seem to be only survirors, still the implications of using the above in respect to the powerful execution of various network centric warfare events, would definitely raise not just my eyebrows for sure. Two years ago, led by IMLogic a consortium on IM threats was established, the IM Threat Center, an indispensable early warning system for anything related to IM malware.



Would age-old IM threats re-introduce themselves on military networks like never before? Whatever the outcome, information overload wouldn't necessarily be solved through instant communications, but in a combination with powerful visualization concepts as well.



The post recently appeared at LinuxSecurity.com "IM me" a strike order"



Technorati tags:
Security, Military, IM, Technology, Symantec, Bantu