Those who remember the Crypto Wars of the 1990s will recall
all of the
claims about "we won't be able to wiretap because of
encryption". In
that regard, this portion of the latest DoJ wiretap report
is
interesting:
Public Law 106-197 amended 18 U.S.C. 2519(2)(b) to require
that
reporting should reflect the number of wiretap
applications
granted for which encryption was encountered and whether
such
encryption prevented law enforcement officials from
obtaining
the plain text of communications intercepted pursuant to
the
court orders. In 2006, no instances were reported of
encryption
encountered during any federal or state wiretap.
The situation may be different for national security
wiretaps, but of
course that's where compliance with any US anti-crypto laws
are least
likely. There was no mention of national security or
terrorism-related
wiretaps in the report, possibly because they've all been
done with
FISA warrants.
--Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbi
a.edu/~smb
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