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5 September 1999
From: "Caspar Bowden" <cb@fipr.org>
To: "Ukcrypto (E-mail)" <ukcrypto@maillist.ox.ac.uk>
Subject: Observer 5/9/99: "E-squad launched to crack criminal codes on the
net"
Date: Sun, 5 Sep 1999 11:19:45 +0100
http://www.newsunlimited.co.uk/observer/uk_news/story/0,3879,79397,00.html
Links, reports and background: more about privacy on the net
Richard Reeves, Society Editor
Sunday September 5, 1999
A specialist code-cracking unit is being set up to counter the growing use of encrypted e-mail messages by drug-runners and paedophile rings. The unit, with funding of £15-20 million, will draw staff from the Government's communications centres at GCHQ - but will also headhunt top code designers from the private sector. 'You could compare it to cracking the Enigma code during World War Two,' said one senior Government source. 'We need an Alan Turing for the Internet age.'
Big salaries will be offered to lure high-flying programmers into the unit, which will be given a deliberately anodyne name - almost certainly the Government Telecommunications Advisory Centre.
'The major criminal organisations, especially the drugs cartels, are incredibly sophisticated. They have the money to have whole departments working on codes. For now the encryption problem is not huge - but it is going to grow and we need to be ready for it,' said the source. Combined with fingerprint access, encrypted e-mail messages are likely to become the communication of choice for serious criminals, according to the intelligence services.
Legitimate businesses are also poised to use encryption to protect market-sensitive information, with two-thirds of firms saying that security fears were the biggest barrier to joining the e-commerce revolution, according to a Department of Trade and Industry survey.
Since the Government abandoned plans to force all users of encryption to deposit a key with a 'trusted third party' - a move fiercely opposed by business - attention has focused on beefing up the detection of electronic data by law enforcement agencies. 'We are ending up with one of the most liberal regimes in the world,' said a DTI official. 'This makes interception of messages and rapid decoding vital.'
Experts at the National Criminal Intelligence Service (NCIS), which will also provide staff and support for the unit, said that gathering real-time information was crucial to the police and customs. 'Given enough time and computer power, most codes can be cracked,' an NCIS expert said. 'But cracking a code two weeks after a message has been intercepted is more often than not completely useless, given that details of deals, time and place, are what we need. Real-time information is gold-dust.'
The intelligence and law enforcement services hope the team of code-crackers will help electronic eavesdropping as fruitful as phone-tapping has been in recent decades. During 1996 and 1997, interception of communications - almost entirely phone taps - resulted in 1,200 arrests, seizure of 115 tonnes of illegal drugs and 450 firearms, according the Home Office. More than half of the 2,600 interception warrants issued by the Home Secretary resulted in arrests. Some of these are already the result of e-mail interception, but the Home Office does not advertise the success of 'e-taps'.
Later this year the DTI is introducing a Bill on electronic commerce, which will put in place a voluntary system of accreditation for firms using the Internet to conduct business. The Bill will also give law enforcement agencies the right to demand the computer key to an encryption 'key', having been granted a warrant as part of a criminal investigation. But intelligence officers said this power was of limited value because demanding an encryption key tells criminals they are under investigation.
The Government will be at pains to allay fears of a Big Brother state intercepting personal e-mail. 'The idea that we have any interest in the communications of anyone other than serious criminals, or indeed the resources, is laughable,' said the NCIS source.