From: Mikko Rauhala (mjr@iki.fi)
Date: Mon Sep 17 2001 - 16:42:39 MDT
Ok, let's try again without the PGP/MIME-signature part. If that was the
problem with this message going through the first time, I'll just call
it irony.
On 17 Sep 2001 11:49:25 -0500, Harvey Newstrom wrote:
> This is called steganography. It is easy to detect if one looks for it.
The detection relies on statistics (well, that which I'm aware of
anyway) and isn't exactly an exact science, and the chance of success
depends also on the way the steganograpic data channel is being used. If
the communication needs are rather small (say, in the case of
hypothetical terrorists who have agreed upon a compact code for their
communications), a proper sporadically and, for those without a secret
key, unpredictably spread secret message in a comparably large noisy
data file easily goes unnoticed.
Of course, generally speaking, the more concealed data one tries to cram
into any given file, the greater the chance of detection with a small
enough margin of error for alarms to ring, so for sending large amounts
of data undetected one would need an even larger apparently legitimate
transfer of a set of noisy data to hide it in. A ban on encryption would
therefore hinder covert communication to some extent, but certainly not
make it impossible.
Just to make it perfectly clear, personally I oppose all limitations on
free encryption for about all of the usual reasons which I don't think I
have to reiterate here.
-- Mikko Rauhala - mjr@iki.fi - <URL:http://www.iki.fi/mjr/>
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