CIA and NSA Running Anonymous Remailers?

by Viktor Mayer-Schoenberger

CIA & NSA run anonymous remailers

I attended last weeks "Information, National Policies, and International Infrastructure" Symposium at Harvard Law School, organized by the Global Information Infrastructure Commission, the Kennedy School and the Institute for Information Technology Law & Policy of Harvard Law School.

During the presentation by Paul Strassmann, National Defense University and William Marlow, Science Applications International Corporation, entitled "Anonymous Remailers as Risk-Free International Infoterrorists" the questions was raised from audience (Professor Chaarles Nesson, Harvard Law School) - in a rather extended debate - whether the CIA and similar government agencies are involved in running anonymous remailers as this would be a perfect target to scan possibly illegal messages.

Both presenters explicitly acknowledged that a number of anonymous remnailers in the US are run by government agencies scanning traffic. Marlow said that the government runs at least a dozen remailers and that the most popular remailers in France and Germany are run by the respective government agencies in these countries. In addition they mentioned that the NSA has successfully developed systems to break encrypted messages below 1000 bit of key length and strongly suggested to use at least 1024 bit keys. They said that they semselves use 1024 bit keys.

I ask Marlos afterwards if these comments were off or on record, he paused then said that he can be quoted.

So I thought I pass that on. It seems interesting enough, don't you think?

Best

Viktor Mayer-Schoenberger Information Law Project Austrian Institute for Legal Policy Groundfog@alpha.c2.org