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Politech is the oldest Internet resource devoted to politics and technology. Launched in 1994 by Declan McCullagh, the mailing list has chronicled the growing intersection of culture, technology, politics, and law. Since 2000, so has the Politech web site.
********* Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2000 From: mech@eff.org (Stanton McCandlish) Subject: FBI gets new hacking tools - any ideas? [Bcc'ing this to Cypherpunks and some others who need to know about this ASAP.) Got a call from a journo, Michelle Quinn of San Jose Mercury News (+1 408 920 5749, mquinn@sjmercury.com) relating to info they obtained from the court in the case of US v. Patrick Naughton. The case revolves around a programmer type (Naughton) who allegedly crossed state lines with intent to engage in sex with a minor (this was another of those cases where the "minor" was a FBI agent, so it's questionable whether any crime was committed at all; looks like entrapment). After a bit of a court fight, Naughton agreed to capitulate to a greatly reduced sentence (no prison time), in exchange for creating 5 pieces of software for the FBI. The court document is 20+ pages, *compeletely* redacted with black pen other than a single paragraph, which says that these are tools the FBI did not yet have, and that they consist of: * "IP number capturing" software * "chat monitoring" software * "image matching" software * "steganography detection" software * a "framework for a program" to enable remotely searching subjects' PCs. Any of these could raise some obvious concerns. I'm curious if anyone might have a clear idea what "image matching software" is, and whether "steganography detection software" is even feasible and what one might do to defeat it. The others are fairly obivious in both intent and viability. I'm expecting a fax of the relevant part of the document shortly, and will put it up on our web site at: http://www.eff.org/Privacy/Surveillance/ Filename to be determined; it'll be at the top of the index. May take a while to get it - the reporter's on deadline. That said, she'd probably appreciate any additional info if anyone has any. -- Stanton McCandlish mech@eff.org http://www.eff.org/~mech Online Communications Director/Webmaster, Electronic Frontier Foundation voice: +1 415 436 9333 x105 fax: +1 415 436 9993