CIA and NSA Running 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