-Caveat Lector- <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/"> </A> -Cui Bono?- from:\ http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,34388-2,00.html Click Here: <A HREF="http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,34388-2,00.html">Everything Hacked but the Budget</A> ----- Everything Hacked but the Budget by Declan McCullagh 1:15 p.m. 16.Feb.2000 PST Justice Department and FBI officials Wednesday told a Senate panel that last week's denial of service attacks provide ample reason to give law enforcement bigger budgets and additional powers. Attorney General Janet Reno testified that the Clinton administration's fiscal year 2001 budget request would give agents the "capacity to trace and detect cyber criminals around the world." ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Read more Technology news Everybody's got issues in Politics ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Neither Reno nor FBI Director Louis Freeh divulged details about suspects in last week's assault against prominent Web sites, except to say agents are interviewing people and reviewing records kept by the companies that were attacked. "There are fast developing leads.... We are very pleased with the progress of this investigation," Freeh told the Senate Commerce, Justice, and State appropriations subcommittee. They urged Congress to approve the administration's request for $37 million in extra funding in addition to the roughly $100 million now being spent on federal computer crime-fighting. The budget also includes $240 million to rewire telephone networks to ensure police can wiretap communications. The members of the panel, headed by Senator Judd Gregg (R-New Hampshire), appeared inclined to give the FBI what it wanted. Republican leaders hastily arranged Tuesday's event -- usually appropriation hearings take place in the spring -- after the attacks that temporarily crippled the Web sites of companies including Yahoo, eBay, and Amazon.com. Freeh used the opportunity to condemn malicious hackers, "hactivism," and virus writers such as the author of Melissa, which he termed "a particularly dangerous type of threat." Repeating a long-standing theme, he said data-scrambling encryption products posed a real danger to police, who needed access to descrambled documents or communications. During previous appearances on Capitol Hill, Freeh has warned of drug smugglers, child pornographers, spies, and terrorists cloaking their communications with impunity. Now he said hackers, such as the ones responsible for the denial of service attacks, could encrypt their files and make the evidence "all but worthless to us." "Without the ability of law enforcement to get court-ordered access to plaintext, we're going to be out of business," Freeh said. "If it is unaddressed, we're not going to [be able to] work in many of these areas." He said that the FBI is finding more and more cases -- including 53 last year -- in which suspects are using encryption products like PGP to shield their files. Declassified FBI documents show the agency used similar arguments in 1994 when asking Congress to enact the Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act. What the FBI wants is clear: Access to non-scrambled communications. But Freeh didn't say how he would achieve that, since it doesn't appear likely that Congress will ban encryption software without backdoors for the Feds. One possibility is a controversial plan that says if a suspect was using data-scrambling encryption products, the FBI's G-men would enter the suspect's home and install software to tap into and decipher scrambled communications. During a hearing in February 1999 before the same Senate subcommittee, Gregg asked Freeh, "Have you given up on encryption?" Replied the FBI director: " I have not given up on encryption." Copyright � 2000 Wired Digital Inc., a Lycos Network site. All rights reserved. <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance�not soap-boxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'�with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds�is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. 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