Subject: Government Can Monitor Your PC Date: 28 Oct 1999 15:24:24 PDT From: Martin Shackelford Organization: Concentric Internet Services Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy.jfk / _| o \ V / \| | __| | | / _| \_ \ '_/\ /| \\ | _|| V V \_ \ |__/_| .// |_|\_|___|\_n_/|__/ http://mprofaca.cro.net/mainmenu.html ================================ Thursday October 28, 1999 ================================ Government spies don't need to read your email to know what you're up to. Newly declassified documents say they can read your PC's electromagnetic emissions. Declan McCullagh reports from Washington. TEMPEST Brewing for PC Privacy? http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,32097,00.html Oct 26 1999 by Declan McCullagh mailto:declan@wired.com WASHINGTON -- Plenty of people worry about their privacy online, but few consider that someone may be eavesdropping on what they're typing -- through a wall or even across the street. It's something government snoops have been able to do for at least the last decade, according to newly released documents from the US National Security Agency. http://www.nsa.gov:8080/ Spy agencies have dubbed the concept TEMPEST, a code name for technologies used to intercept and decipher the electromagnetic signals that all computers emit. See also: Net Wiretapping: Yes or No? http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,31895,00.html More: Infostructure in Wired News http://www.wired.com/news/infostructure/ Spooks have known about TEMPEST technologies at least since the 1960s -- some people have even http://patent.womplex.ibm.com/details?patent_number=5297201 patented ways to shield computers. But details that aren't classified have been relatively scarce. http://www.wired.com/news/news/politics/story/22045.html John Young hopes to change all that. This week he began to publish on his http://jya.com/crypto.htm Web site the results of TEMPEST documents he obtained from the NSA through a Freedom of Information Act request. "People don't know it's out there as a snooping threat," says Young, an architect-turned-archivist who collects cryptographic documents. "Defense contractors have it but it's under nondisclosure. It's pretty carefully guarded." One study -- one of the few that's not classified -- performed by UK researchers Ross Anderson and Markus Kuhn showed that it was possible to capture images from a remote computer monitor. Government-spec shielded systems ward against this, but are more expensive and in limited supply in the private sector. What's the most interesting thing Young has found in the 184 pages of technical standards and jargon the NSA handed him? "They're able to do standoff surveillance without tapping," said Young. "That's the most lethal thing in there." About half of the pages are blanked out with thick black lines, and nearly all of the vital numbers -- signaling rates, maximum data bandwidth, and frequencies -- are redacted. Citing "national security," the NSA released only two of the 24 documents Young requested. One of those two documents, entitled "Compromising Emanations Laboratory Test Requirements, Electromagnetics" http://cryptome.org/nt1-92-1-5.htm was prepared by the NSA's Telecommunications and Information Systems Security group. It describes test procedures for measuring the radiation emitted from a computer -- both through radio waves and through telephone, serial, network, or power cables attached to it. ========================================================= To read second part of this article go to: http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,32097-2,00.html