Privacy and More at Risk.

The security of personal communications appears again to have succumbed to government’s desire to listen in on them. This week two University of California graduate students, using a laptop computer, reported cracking digital cell-phone codes thought to be impossible to break. Such encryption is what has kept cyberthieves from “snatching” digital cell-phone codes from the airwaves and using them or selling them to others for illegal calls. Such theft from old-style analog cell phones has cost phone companies and, by extension, their customers-millions of dollars.

But in breaching digital phones’ protection, the computer researchers didn’t merely reveal potential dangers to cell-phone users. They exposed a threat by government to a safe, prosperous digital electronic future for everyone. The researchers say their cellular code cracking was made easier because the code itself had been weakened possibly to allow for government surveillance. That may or may not be true. No coding expert though could think of any other good reason for the phone codes now. Federal law enforcement and security agencies have tried repeatedly to keep not only phone companies but also U.S., software makers and computer manufacturers from providing the best code protection available for everything from computer records to bank accounts – unless they provide government technological means to secretly get around it. Those agencies now are pushing Congress to pass laws that would require such decoding technology for any encrypted information. They say it’s needed so they protect the nation from terrorists and drug dealers.

But a National Research Council study in 1996 and European Commission report this year found that crooks and terrorists can get around any country’s cryptography restrictions, with software available on “the Internet. And there are thousands of encryption products sold over the counter worldwide. Indeed as the cloning of the cell-phone codes shows, those most threatened by government’s obsession with maintaining its eavesdropping capability are legitimate businesses and their customers.

If government would only get out of their way, they’d have a better chance of protecting themselves.

Task 4. Answer the following questions:

1. What is the government’s desire?
2. Why is security of personal communication succumbing to the government?
3. What did the graduate students of the University of California do?
4. What kept cyberthieves from snatching digital cell-phone codes?
5. How much did such theft from old-style analog cell phone cost phone customers?
6. What does breaching digital phone’s protection mean for cell phone – users?
7. What way the researcher’s cellular code-cracking made easier?
8. What do coding experts think about the phone code’s flaw?
9. What organizations were kept from providing the best code protection available for everybody?
10. Who tried to persuade them doing so?
11. What are these agencies pushing Congress to do?
12. How do they explain it?
13. What does cloning of the cell-phone codes show?
14. What is meant by the “government’s obsession”?

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