In previous cases of the government somehow magically gaining access to "securely encrypted" data, it eventually turned out that the government had compromised the target's machine and installed a key logger, or some other piece of software to record the relevant secret information. So far, I've seen no information ruling this kind of thing out. It's in the government's interest to keep its methodology as secret and mysterious as it can.
A common mistake is looking at PGP or Hushmail or some other kind of secure mail system and saying "only I can read my my mail. Not even close to true: Unless you're doing all your decryption with a pencil and a piece of paper, it's your *computer* that can read your mail. And today's computers simply cannot be treated as trusted. None of which argues against alternative possible scenarios, such as the "turned" correspondent at the other end of the mail interchange. The fact is, we just don't know how this information was obtained. We *may* learn more as the result of discovery leading up to trial. It's generally difficult for the government to keep out of the record the methods they use to obtain evidence, as doing so will tend to taint the evidence and make it inadmissible. I'm sure there are plenty of lawyers looking closely at how to struture things to keep as many details hidden as possible, however. The fact that information came from a "confidential informant" has to be revealed, but the identify of that informant can generally be kept concealed. Someone will argue that the decrypted data plays the role of the "confidential informant".... -- Jerry --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]