Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts. And how the
Speaker 1: tech are you. I am currently on vacation. Hopefully I'm
Speaker 1: having a good time, and I hope you're having a
Speaker 1: good time wherever you happen to be as well. But
Speaker 1: in the meantime, I thought I would bring you an
Speaker 1: episode that we published originally on February seventeenth, twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: It's titled When Secrets Aren't Secret. This is about the
Speaker 1: curious case of the CIA, the Central Intelligence Agency of
Speaker 1: the United States of America, owning and operating an encryption company,
Speaker 1: which seems to be a bit of a conflict. Let's
Speaker 1: listen in. So I want to talk about the business
Speaker 1: of communication and secrets and also the business of eavesdropping
Speaker 1: and why all of this gets real dodgy, real fast.
Speaker 1: So the initial story doesn't involve China or five G Networks.
Speaker 1: It goes further back than that. It actually concerns a
Speaker 1: Swiss company called cryptoag and its ties to the Central
Speaker 1: Intelligence Agency aka the CIA in the United States. The
Speaker 1: story is all about the battle between secrecy and surveillance,
Speaker 1: and it's also about trust, as in, whom do you
Speaker 1: trust when you want to send a secure communication to
Speaker 1: someone else? If you're using some sort of technology to
Speaker 1: encrypt your stuff, who makes that encryption you know, strategy,
Speaker 1: whether it's it's software or actual device or whatever it
Speaker 1: may be, who's making that and can they be trusted?
Speaker 1: And as it turns out, those are difficult questions to
Speaker 1: answer than would readily seem apparent. Now, the story for
Speaker 1: this really begins with a Swedish inventor named ARV Gerard
Speaker 1: Dom who was born in eighteen sixty nine. He worked
Speaker 1: in textile mills before he would start creating his own
Speaker 1: version of a cipher machine sometime around nineteen fifteen or so. So,
Speaker 1: what the heck is a cipher machine? Heck? What's a cipher? Well,
Speaker 1: a cipher is a code. It's a way of hiding
Speaker 1: the meaning of a message. And there are a lot
Speaker 1: of different approaches to encoding information, and there are a
Speaker 1: lot of strategies that actually employ multiple versions of this,
Speaker 1: multiple schemes. So, for example, one way to have a
Speaker 1: code is to use words that refer to something else,
Speaker 1: So instead of saying a military tank, you might say Thomas.
Speaker 1: You know, because you got Thomas the tank engine, and
Speaker 1: you go from Thomas the tank engine to military tank
Speaker 1: and there you are. So if you referred to a
Speaker 1: Thomas you might be talking about a tank. That would
Speaker 1: be a very bad code, or at least a very
Speaker 1: easy to decipher code. But that's a version of codes
Speaker 1: where you have a codebook that tells you what certain
Speaker 1: words or phrases actually are meant to convey. Then you
Speaker 1: have ciphers in which you replace the letters of a
Speaker 1: message with some other letter or symbol, and the simplest
Speaker 1: of these is a shift cipher, sometimes also called a
Speaker 1: Caesar cipher. And with these ciphers, you write on a message,
Speaker 1: but you shift all the letters some predetermined number down
Speaker 1: or up the alphabet. So if you had a shift
Speaker 1: cipher with just one shift one step, that would mean
Speaker 1: that you would use the letter B to represent the
Speaker 1: letter A, you would use the letter C to represent
Speaker 1: the letter B, and so on down the alphabet. So
Speaker 1: if someone else were to get hold of the message
Speaker 1: at casual glance, the message would appear to be gibberish.
Speaker 1: But of course that particular cipher is super easy to decode,
Speaker 1: even if you are shifting further up or down the alphabet.
Speaker 1: Let's say you're shifting up ten spots instead of one. Well,
Speaker 1: just because of the nature of language, someone with even
Speaker 1: a little bit of patience would be able to probably
Speaker 1: break that code pretty quickly. Well. In the early twentieth
Speaker 1: century and victors were working on mechanical systems that would
Speaker 1: create stronger ciphers, and initially these were mostly thought of
Speaker 1: as a way to protect business communications like financial communications
Speaker 1: between banks, for example, or sometimes political messages between different
Speaker 1: parts of the world, like a government and its embassy
Speaker 1: in another country. That over time they would be adopted
Speaker 1: by militaries around the world to send secret communications back
Speaker 1: and forth between headquarters and units in the field, and
Speaker 1: these communications needed to be much more secure than a
Speaker 1: caesar cipher could potentially offer. So the basic idea behind
Speaker 1: these cipher machines was that you would have a device.
Speaker 1: Sometime times it would look like a typewriter. Sometimes it
Speaker 1: would have a hand crank on it, but typically there'd
Speaker 1: be at least one dial, if not several dials, and
Speaker 1: perhaps some other components that would allow the operator to
Speaker 1: set the machine to establish the cipher. So you choose
Speaker 1: your settings, and then the operator would take a message
Speaker 1: that is meant to be encoded and then put it
Speaker 1: through this machine in some way. Maybe they're using a keyboard,
Speaker 1: maybe they're using a series of keys and levers. However
Speaker 1: it may be they're actually typing out the message in
Speaker 1: plain text. But the cipher machines would have some sort
Speaker 1: of gears or other chains or systems that would turn
Speaker 1: with each letter type, and it would change the cipher
Speaker 1: as it did, so change the nature of it. And
Speaker 1: this was a really clever way to confound code breakers,
Speaker 1: particularly if the machine was really well designed. So let's
Speaker 1: say you are an operator and you have the word
Speaker 1: book that you need to encode using one of these machines.
Speaker 1: So you have one of these particular machines. You type
Speaker 1: the letter B into the device, which, because of the
Speaker 1: settings for this particular session, will now print out the
Speaker 1: letter G. So the letter G means B with this
Speaker 1: particular cipher. The gears inside the machine turn after you've
Speaker 1: typed in the letter B, which prints out as G,
Speaker 1: So now the cipher is actually different. You type in
Speaker 1: the first O in book and you get another G
Speaker 1: because of the way the cipher works. Then the gears
Speaker 1: turn again. You type in the second O, and now
Speaker 1: the machine prints out the letter F. The gears turn again,
Speaker 1: you type out the letter K, and you get the
Speaker 1: print out of K, So the printed word says ggf
Speaker 1: K rather than book. Well, to decode the message, you
Speaker 1: would typically need the same sort of machine that was
Speaker 1: used to encode it, and you would need to know
Speaker 1: what settings the operator had been using when they started
Speaker 1: the message, and you would have to set up your
Speaker 1: machine to mirror that, and then you would end up
Speaker 1: taking the encoded message and you would start typing that
Speaker 1: out and the process would essentially reverse itself and it
Speaker 1: would allow the operator to read out the original message.
Speaker 1: So in our example, the operator on the other side
Speaker 1: would take GGFK and enter that into their machine and
Speaker 1: they would get the print out book. Now a couple
Speaker 1: of caveats here. Not all cipher machines are created equal
Speaker 1: right or were used to their best advantage. Sometimes people
Speaker 1: made bad decisions when it came to either designing cipher
Speaker 1: machines or implementing them. For example, the big wigs might
Speaker 1: decide that, in no circumstance would you ever have a
Speaker 1: letter represented by itself. You would never allow that to happen.
Speaker 1: So in the example I just gave where GGFK means book,
Speaker 1: that last k wouldn't work. You would have to have
Speaker 1: the device go to a different letter because it would
Speaker 1: not allow itself to replicate a letter with a representation
Speaker 1: of itself. Other rules that could cause problems on the
Speaker 1: road might be a rule against the doubling of letters
Speaker 1: like the gg and GGFK. And the reason that these
Speaker 1: are problems is that if you have a code breaker
Speaker 1: who's really looking at these codes closely, and that code
Speaker 1: breaker starts to figure out that there are restrictions to
Speaker 1: the code, they can build that into their code breaking
Speaker 1: models in an effort to crack the code. Because as
Speaker 1: you put in restrictions, that means you're reducing variables. And
Speaker 1: anyone who has worked in any sort of mathematics, particularly
Speaker 1: stuff like algebra, you know that to solve complicated problems
Speaker 1: you need to reduce variables. As you reduce variables, you
Speaker 1: make it easier to solve problems. So it was actually
Speaker 1: this sort of thing that would lead to the British
Speaker 1: cryptographers breaking German codes during World War Two. It wasn't
Speaker 1: that the technology itself was necessarily faulty. It was that
Speaker 1: the Germans were kind of using bad methodology with some
Speaker 1: of their equipment, and that's what gave an inroad for
Speaker 1: code breakers. Now, if you want to learn way more
Speaker 1: about how these machines actually work, you can listen to
Speaker 1: tech Stuff Ponders and Enigma. That's a classic episode that
Speaker 1: originally published way back on October nineteenth, twenty eleven, and
Speaker 1: I actually did a tech Stuff Classic rerun of that
Speaker 1: episode on October twelfth, twenty eighteen. The Enigma machine is
Speaker 1: the most famous cipher device that was made in the
Speaker 1: early twentieth century. It was made and used by the Germans,
Speaker 1: and it was used extensively by the German military during
Speaker 1: World War Two. And in that podcast, my old co
Speaker 1: host Chris Paulette and I talk about how a really
Speaker 1: good cipher one that's super hard to crack, is also
Speaker 1: a pain in the patookas to use because of that complexity,
Speaker 1: and that's mainly why officials would put rules in place
Speaker 1: that ultimately would service the downfall for their technology, because
Speaker 1: using the tech without those rules in place was possible,
Speaker 1: but not always fast enough to be practical. This would
Speaker 1: prove to be a problem with cryptography in general. You
Speaker 1: want a system that's secure enough that you're reasonably certain
Speaker 1: a person who intercepts the message would be unable to
Speaker 1: make header tail of it. Right. That's the whole purpose
Speaker 1: of cryptography is to make any unauthorized person incapable of
Speaker 1: reading the message. But you also want your solution to
Speaker 1: be practical enough that your intended recipient can decode the
Speaker 1: message with a minimum of fuss, particularly if it relates
Speaker 1: to a time sensitive issue. So in this case, you
Speaker 1: had Germans using these same settings on their Enigma machines
Speaker 1: for longer than they were supposed to, or they were
Speaker 1: co locating codebooks with the Enigma machines and those fell
Speaker 1: into Allied hands who were able to use those two
Speaker 1: decode messages. To this day, balancing out practical applications with
Speaker 1: security remains a challenge. It may make it take longer
Speaker 1: for a message to get through from one point to another,
Speaker 1: which a lot of people don't accept in the age
Speaker 1: of information traveling at the speed of light. Or it
Speaker 1: just may be a pain to encrypt and decrypt, which
Speaker 1: also ends up becoming a barrier to adoption and implementation. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's get back to our story. So it's the nineteen tens, right,
Speaker 1: It's around nineteen fifteen. Arred Garaddam has patented an encryption device.
Speaker 1: He got that patent by nineteen nineteen and to manufacture
Speaker 1: and market the device, Dom would work with business partners
Speaker 1: to create a company originally called Cryptograph or ab Cryptograph,
Speaker 1: and one of Dom's investors was a guy named Carl
Speaker 1: Wilhelm Heglan who had made his money in Russia in
Speaker 1: the oil business. But then the Russian Revolution happened and
Speaker 1: Haglan fled with his family and they returned to Haglund's
Speaker 1: homeland of Sweden. They brought the family with them, and
Speaker 1: Boris Haglan was a Carl Wilhelm Hegland's son, and Boris
Speaker 1: was given a position in Dom's company in return for
Speaker 1: this financial investment from his father. Now Boris would actually
Speaker 1: prove to be quite the entrepreneur. In nineteen twenty five,
Speaker 1: he would take over the company entirely. He became the
Speaker 1: new head of the company. He would rename it Crypto
Speaker 1: Technic in nineteen thirty two, and then when the Nazis
Speaker 1: rose to power, he fled Sweden for Switzerland and re
Speaker 1: established his company there, and it was this company that
Speaker 1: he established that would later become known as Cryptoag, the
Speaker 1: focus of our episode really well. In the meantime, his
Speaker 1: company continued to produce new cipher machines, incorporating new features
Speaker 1: in an effort to build machines that were able to
Speaker 1: create stronger codes. And again, this was mostly for business
Speaker 1: use or occasional government use, but the rise of World
Speaker 1: War II would create a new market as military sought
Speaker 1: ways to send messages securely without fear that their plans
Speaker 1: would be shown to an enemy. And that's when the
Speaker 1: United States would enter into the picture, setting the stage
Speaker 1: for the company's future in ways Hageland could not have anticipated.
Speaker 1: I'll explain more when we come back, but first let's
Speaker 1: take a quick break. So when World War two broke out,
Speaker 1: the United States military would become one of Cryptoag's customers,
Speaker 1: and when the Nazis invaded Norway in nineteen forty, Hageland
Speaker 1: would again move operations. This time he moved to the
Speaker 1: United States. His company's encryption device, known as the M
Speaker 1: two nine, would be produced in the US. According to
Speaker 1: the Washington Post, there was a typewriter factory in upstate
Speaker 1: New York that would end up making around one hundred
Speaker 1: and forty thousand of these M two nine encryption devices,
Speaker 1: and Hagland negotiated with the US Army and landed an
Speaker 1: eight point six million dollar contract, a princely sum today,
Speaker 1: but certainly a princely sum way back in nineteen forty.
Speaker 1: Hegland's devices lacked the sophistication of Germany's Enigma machine. They
Speaker 1: weren't nearly as complex, nor were they as capable of
Speaker 1: creating very tough encryption, so codebreakers could suss out the
Speaker 1: original messages that were created on an M two nine
Speaker 1: if they were given enough time and attention, and for
Speaker 1: that reason, the Army primarily relied on these devices to
Speaker 1: disguise extra dreamly time sensitive orders. So the logic was,
Speaker 1: by the time someone had actually broken the code, the
Speaker 1: information would be worthless anyway, because whatever was being covered
Speaker 1: in the message would have already happened. It would have
Speaker 1: been something that was more imminent, so you wouldn't be
Speaker 1: able to act on the information, even though you'd be
Speaker 1: able to at least decode what had been said. So
Speaker 1: you wouldn't want to use these devices for any sort
Speaker 1: of long term plans because they were crackable. People could
Speaker 1: crack the codes with given enough a time. Now. Around
Speaker 1: that same time, Haglan became good friends with another cryptographer
Speaker 1: named William Friedman. Freedman was born in Russia. Actually, so
Speaker 1: was Haglan. Hegland's parents were Swedish, but when they had
Speaker 1: Boris he was the family was in Russia. So Friedman's
Speaker 1: family left Russia when Friedman was just a baby back
Speaker 1: in eighteen ninety two due to a rise in anti
Speaker 1: Semitism in Russia and Friedman his family's Jewish. So Freedman
Speaker 1: grew up loving codes and cryptography and became fascinated with them.
Speaker 1: He joined a private research lab. He met and then
Speaker 1: courted and then married a woman named Elizabeth Smith, who
Speaker 1: on her own was an accomplished cryptographer, a brilliant cryptographer.
Speaker 1: And they both sort of worked for George Fabian, and
Speaker 1: that was the guy who owned the private research lab.
Speaker 1: Fabian sounds like the sort of person who really belonged
Speaker 1: in the Renaissance as far as I'm concerned. In the
Speaker 1: Renaissance you had rich nobles who would become patrons of
Speaker 1: great thinkers and philosophers and artists. Fabian he established this
Speaker 1: private research lab in order to look into stuff that
Speaker 1: he just thought was interesting, which I think is kind
Speaker 1: of cool, maybe a little eccentric. Well, when the United
Speaker 1: States entered World War One, the Friedman's husband and wife
Speaker 1: would work in code breaking for the United States, and
Speaker 1: the cryptologic division of the research lab became the genesis
Speaker 1: for the American Cryptography Service. So William Freeman would later
Speaker 1: become the chief cryptoanalyst. In fact, he termed the or
Speaker 1: he coined the term cryptoanalysis for the United States, and
Speaker 1: would lead the future Signals Intelligence Service before going on
Speaker 1: to serve in other intelligence agencies as a cryptographer. So
Speaker 1: Friedman was very much working in the same world as Hegeland,
Speaker 1: though you could say that these were from opposing perspectives, right,
Speaker 1: because Hegeland's company was all about producing machines that could
Speaker 1: incipher messages, while Freedman was largely interested in finding methods
Speaker 1: to decipher codes. Though Freeman also worked in theory as
Speaker 1: well to talk about different ways to create stronger ciphers.
Speaker 1: And we'll come back to Freedman in just a moment.
Speaker 1: So Hegelan would stay in the US until World War
Speaker 1: Two ended in Europe, and he had become extremely wealthy
Speaker 1: due to the lucrative army contract he had made, and
Speaker 1: he had built many professional and personal relationships in the
Speaker 1: United States so he would have strong ties to the US.
Speaker 1: He then returned to Europe to again re establish his
Speaker 1: company there. Meanwhile, American intelligence officials were starting to get
Speaker 1: a little worried because code breaking was growing increasingly difficult
Speaker 1: due to sophisticated machines running complicated systems to create these codes.
Speaker 1: And if you had little insight into how those machines
Speaker 1: worked or which systems they were following at any given time,
Speaker 1: you had really little hope of breaking a code in
Speaker 1: a reasonable amount of time. So it was very clear
Speaker 1: that a lot of people were having really secret conversations
Speaker 1: that American spies were unable to decipher, and that just
Speaker 1: rubbed the Americans the wrong way. I'm going to get
Speaker 1: a little critical of my country in this episode, anyway.
Speaker 1: In nineteen fifty one, on Hageland's company introduced the CX
Speaker 1: fifty two cipher machine, and this one was sophisticated enough
Speaker 1: to present a code that American intelligence agents viewed as
Speaker 1: practically unbreakable at the time, and that in turn prompted
Speaker 1: some heated internal discussions within the US intelligence community and
Speaker 1: what should officials do about this? Because there was a
Speaker 1: real worry that countries might go out and buy Hageland's products.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's what Hagland was making them for. And
Speaker 1: if they did that, they would all be able to
Speaker 1: communicate secretly, and the Americans would be unable to snoop
Speaker 1: out what was going on. And boy, howdy does America
Speaker 1: hate that. So American officials gave a sort of carrot
Speaker 1: and a stick offer to Hagland. So on the one hand,
Speaker 1: they were a big customer for his company, right, the
Speaker 1: United States represented a significant potential customer for Hageland's products.
Speaker 1: He didn't want that source of revenue to go away.
Speaker 1: So there was that They also had a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of old M two nine cipher devices that were manufactured
Speaker 1: in America during World War Two, and there was at
Speaker 1: least the implied threat that if Hagelan wouldn't be you know,
Speaker 1: cooperative with the US, maybe the Americans might let a
Speaker 1: few thousand M two nine s get sold off to
Speaker 1: countries around the world, and that would undercut Crypto's own
Speaker 1: sales in the process. I mean, if you are a
Speaker 1: country you know, the head of an agency in a
Speaker 1: smaller country with limited resources, and the United States says, hey,
Speaker 1: we'll sell you these old but totally working cipher machines
Speaker 1: for much less than that brand new, shiny cipher machine.
Speaker 1: You're going to go with the cheaper model as long
Speaker 1: as it works, and that means that Crypto would not
Speaker 1: be making any sale. Then there was William Friedman, Hageland's
Speaker 1: old buddy. In nineteen fifty one, Freeman was then serving
Speaker 1: as the head of the Cryptographic Division of the Armed
Speaker 1: Forces Security Agency or AFSA AFSA. The following year he
Speaker 1: would become the head of the Cryptology Department for the
Speaker 1: National Security Agency, or the NSA. But it was in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty one when Friedman would act on behalf of
Speaker 1: the US government and met secretly with Hagelan in Washington,
Speaker 1: d c. So Friedman goes up to Hagelan with a
Speaker 1: fairly thorny proposition. The deal was this, Hageland was to
Speaker 1: continue creating cipher machines just as the company had been,
Speaker 1: but Crypto would only sell the most sophisticated of those
Speaker 1: machines to a list of countries that the United States
Speaker 1: would provide to Hageland, and that would represent countries with
Speaker 1: whom the un U had very good relations, so allies
Speaker 1: and that sort of thing. They were the only countries
Speaker 1: who would be allowed to buy the top of the
Speaker 1: line products. Crypto would be allowed to sell older, more
Speaker 1: vulnerable or weak machines to any country that was not
Speaker 1: on that list. So in other words, Freeman was asking
Speaker 1: Hegeland to kind of put on a preference list certain
Speaker 1: countries and then everyone else would get older, more vulnerable technologies. However,
Speaker 1: that's the extent of that deal. It didn't go further
Speaker 1: than that, but it's still a pretty big request, and
Speaker 1: you can kind of understand where the US was coming from.
Speaker 1: At least, you know, they clearly did not want the
Speaker 1: job to be even harder when it came to breaking codes.
Speaker 1: And Hegeland would ultimately agree to this deal, and whether
Speaker 1: it was he saw a guaranteed payout from the US
Speaker 1: and so it was strictly a business decision. He just
Speaker 1: fello was in Goswel to turn down this offer, or
Speaker 1: he felt a strong sense of loyalty toward a country
Speaker 1: that had made him a millionaire, or maybe it was
Speaker 1: some combination of these and other factors. I don't know,
Speaker 1: but whatever it was, he said yes, and this would
Speaker 1: mark the beginning of the US intelligence community having a
Speaker 1: direct interest in a company that was selling cryptographic equipment,
Speaker 1: that is Crypto. But at this point it was still
Speaker 1: a fairly limited agreement. Crypto could still sell equipment to
Speaker 1: countries all around the world, though any country that was
Speaker 1: not on the US Best Buddy list would only have
Speaker 1: access to the older devices. Now this wasn't because US
Speaker 1: officials were feeling benevolent or anything like that. I don't
Speaker 1: want to paint it as that. There was a very
Speaker 1: real desire in America to push Crypto for a much
Speaker 1: more shady deal. Intelligence officials were hoping that they could
Speaker 1: work directly with Crypto to design machines that were produced
Speaker 1: codes that Americans could quickly break. People would think they
Speaker 1: were sending secure messages, but in reality the Americans would
Speaker 1: be able to decode those messages fairly quickly. But William
Speaker 1: Friedman discouraged anyone from America from going to Hageland with
Speaker 1: such an offer for several years. He said Hageland would
Speaker 1: never go for it. It would be deeply offensive to him.
Speaker 1: You're going to destroy this relationship we have let's not
Speaker 1: you know, let's let's hold back rather than have a loss.
Speaker 1: And hey, there were other companies out there, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's not like you had to buy from Crypto or
Speaker 1: else you'd have no way to communicate secretly. You could
Speaker 1: always get cipher machines and cryptography machines from some other source,
Speaker 1: right well. Part of the deal that the US made
Speaker 1: included substantial amounts of money meant to go toward marketing.
Speaker 1: The US wanted Crypto to be the world leader in
Speaker 1: the market for this sort of device, mostly in an
Speaker 1: effort to make sure that some other crypto company didn't
Speaker 1: come along with better, more difficult to crack solutions, because
Speaker 1: that would just set America back again. So the US
Speaker 1: supplied money year after year to Crypto to renew this
Speaker 1: agreement and to keep the company going even if things
Speaker 1: should get lean, all the while trying to promote cryptos
Speaker 1: products and hold back any of Crypto's competitors. It was
Speaker 1: pretty brutal. Things slowly began to change as time went on.
Speaker 1: The Invention of the transistor would bring on tons of
Speaker 1: innovation and miniaturization. So in the past electric circuits were
Speaker 1: physically enormous because you had to have components like vacuum tubes,
Speaker 1: and those took up a lot of space, and they
Speaker 1: also gave off a lot of heat, which generally is
Speaker 1: bad not just for humans but also for electronics. But
Speaker 1: in the mid nineteen sixties that was all starting to change.
Speaker 1: Electronic circuits could now be made much smaller thanks to
Speaker 1: the transistor, and they made it possible for all sorts
Speaker 1: of new gaps like pocket radios and desktop computers further
Speaker 1: down the line, and yes, new types of cryptographic machines.
Speaker 1: Hagelan was facing a very real problem at that point.
Speaker 1: His company was built around mechanical cryptographic devices. These were
Speaker 1: machines that relied on physical components like gears and levers
Speaker 1: and chains. But the electronic era was heading in a
Speaker 1: different direction, and the crypto company wasn't in a position
Speaker 1: to keep up. If Hagelan wanted to compete, he was
Speaker 1: going to need help. And when someone needs help, that
Speaker 1: means they are vulnerable. Now, if you're in a position
Speaker 1: to help someone, you can more or less selflessly help
Speaker 1: that person to get them out of that vulnerable position,
Speaker 1: or you can attempt to exploit it. And the US
Speaker 1: intelligence community with the NSSA at the forefront took option
Speaker 1: number two. THESA, as I said. The National Security Agency
Speaker 1: was founded in nineteen fifty two, just five years after
Speaker 1: the Central Intelligence Agency was founded. It's primarily focused on
Speaker 1: signals intelligence, and that is the interception and decoding of
Speaker 1: messages for the purposes of gathering intelligence. Over at the NSA,
Speaker 1: an analyst named Peter Jenks hypothesized that with care, you
Speaker 1: could create an electronic cryptographic system that would seem to
Speaker 1: be random, but it would actually depend upon a repeated
Speaker 1: pattern at regular intervals, and a casual glance at the
Speaker 1: code would make it seem as though the system was
Speaker 1: following a complicated algorithm and producing an uncrackable code because
Speaker 1: of some sort of random element. But the repetition of
Speaker 1: the pattern would actually make code breakers with sufficient computing
Speaker 1: power able to decode the messages. It wouldn't be easy,
Speaker 1: it wouldn't be as simple as just running it through
Speaker 1: a decode, but because of that pattern, it would become possible. Again,
Speaker 1: Patterns represent restrictions. Restrictions are vulnerabilities, and vulnerabilities can be exploited.
Speaker 1: So you can make a system that, at least on
Speaker 1: casual glance appears to be secure, but in reality it's not. So.
Speaker 1: The NSA reaches out to Crypto, which is really in
Speaker 1: need of expertise in the form of building electronic cryptographic machines,
Speaker 1: and Hageln welcomes the help because otherwise his business is
Speaker 1: going to completely lose out. So Crypto goes on to
Speaker 1: produce a machine called the H four to sixty based
Speaker 1: off the NSA's design. The company actually made two versions
Speaker 1: of the H four to sixty. One was compromised. It
Speaker 1: used the NSA's repeating pattern so that the agency could
Speaker 1: with time and effort, to code any messages that were
Speaker 1: composed on that particular machine. The other one was more secure,
Speaker 1: it didn't repeat the pattern, so the United States was
Speaker 1: still fine with Crypto selling those machines, the good ones
Speaker 1: to countries that were still on the US Best Buddy list.
Speaker 1: Everyone else would get the compromised version. Now. While the
Speaker 1: NSA's assistance meant that Crypto would remain a viable company
Speaker 1: as the world moved away from mechanical systems, it also
Speaker 1: meant that Crypto was a company that was becoming increasingly
Speaker 1: dependent upon American intelligence agencies. Toward the end of the sixties,
Speaker 1: folks in the CIA were starting to get a little
Speaker 1: bit antsy with the company Crypto. It was a valuable
Speaker 1: asset and countries around the world depended upon equipment from Crypto,
Speaker 1: which meant the US had incredible advantages when it came
Speaker 1: to deciphering intelligence. But Hagelin was getting up there in years,
Speaker 1: He was getting into his eighties, and there was no
Speaker 1: guarantee that his successor would be as amenable to the
Speaker 1: intelligence agents as Haglin had been. Initially, it appeared as
Speaker 1: though he was going to hand over control of his
Speaker 1: company to his son, Bo Hageln. The CIA was not
Speaker 1: crazy about that idea. The agency was not convinced that
Speaker 1: Bo Haglan would be as pliable as Boris Hagelin had been,
Speaker 1: and the nature of the company's relationship with the US
Speaker 1: intelligence community had been kept a secret from Bo. So
Speaker 1: Boris Hagelnd's own son did not apparently know about this
Speaker 1: relationship with the NSA and later the CIA. So Boris
Speaker 1: and his son Bo were also not on the best
Speaker 1: of terms. They frequently had pretty massive fights. Bo had
Speaker 1: felt he had been left out of some pretty important
Speaker 1: patents that he had contributed to, and so he was
Speaker 1: not on good speaking terms with his father. So this
Speaker 1: was a complicated issue and the US government wasn't entirely
Speaker 1: sure how it was going to play out. Meanwhile, over
Speaker 1: in Europe, you had intelligence agencies in West Germany because
Speaker 1: you know, after World War Two, Germany was split up
Speaker 1: into West Germany and East Germany. So West Germany and
Speaker 1: an intelligence agency in France were both eager to purchase
Speaker 1: Crypto from Hageland. You know, Hagland's getting very old, and
Speaker 1: so they think, hey, if we buy this company, then
Speaker 1: we can benefit from this technology. They had figured out
Speaker 1: that the United States had some sort of beneficial relationship
Speaker 1: with Crypto. I'm not sure if they knew the full
Speaker 1: extent of it, but they at least knew that there
Speaker 1: was Someboddy Buddy stuff going on there and they wanted
Speaker 1: to get in on that action. Haglan rejected this initial
Speaker 1: offer and told the CIA about it. So then we
Speaker 1: get to nineteen seventy and then two really big things happen. First,
Speaker 1: Bo Haglan Boris's son would die in a car accident,
Speaker 1: and no conspiracy theorist does not appear that this was
Speaker 1: engineered or manufactured in some way. It appears to have
Speaker 1: been just a car accident and Bo dies as a
Speaker 1: result of this. The CIA cooperates with West Germany's Federal
Speaker 1: Intelligence Service also known as bn D. It's called that
Speaker 1: because in German federal Intelligence service is a different, very
Speaker 1: long word that I am not even going to attempt
Speaker 1: to pronounce, and they create an agreement in which these
Speaker 1: two agencies would co own the company. In secret, the
Speaker 1: CIA told West Germany, hey, we'll totally go in z's
Speaker 1: with you on this one, but you got to cut
Speaker 1: France out of the deal, and West Germany said, okay.
Speaker 1: By France, alf Vida zey Hageln would be presented with
Speaker 1: this deal and would agree to the terms, and the
Speaker 1: agencies would rely upon a company in Liechtenstein that was
Speaker 1: called Marxer and Goop at the time. Great name, but
Speaker 1: Marxer and Goop would draw up the agreement in such
Speaker 1: a way that the agency's identities would be protected through
Speaker 1: a series of shell companies and other you know, obfuscation,
Speaker 1: so even if you were to dig into it, you
Speaker 1: would not be able to see that the CIA and
Speaker 1: B and D were co owners of this company. Instead,
Speaker 1: you would get all these this sort of a run around,
Speaker 1: you know, a wild goose chase about the ownership of Crypto.
Speaker 1: It would not appear to be owned by any intelligence agencies. However,
Speaker 1: so hag Glen sold his company for just under six
Speaker 1: million dollars. He would pass away in nineteen eighty three
Speaker 1: after a very long illness, so he kind of leaves
Speaker 1: our story. But meanwhile, the two intelligence agencies now had
Speaker 1: secret control of a company that manufactured products meant to
Speaker 1: make communications secret. I think you can see where this
Speaker 1: is going, right. If your agency is all about uncovering
Speaker 1: secrets and then you get control of a leading company
Speaker 1: that makes stuff that's supposed to create things secretly, you're
Speaker 1: like a kid in a candy store. I mean, it
Speaker 1: was like they were selling locks to everyone in the world,
Speaker 1: but they were holding on to all the skeleton keys
Speaker 1: that would give them access to those locks. It was incredible. Now,
Speaker 1: I should be clear that the list of clients for
Speaker 1: Crypto did not include everybody. Not everyone in the world
Speaker 1: was eager to purchase the products from this company. Two
Speaker 1: potential customers in particular were not on the list. China
Speaker 1: and Russia were both suspicious about Crypto for years. By
Speaker 1: the time the CIA gained partial ownership, so they did
Speaker 1: not purchase those products. They were figured something was up.
Speaker 1: But other countries, including lots of US allies, were Crypto
Speaker 1: customers frequent ones. While these two agencies would share ownership
Speaker 1: of the company for a couple of decades, things were
Speaker 1: not always super smooth between them. The West Germans noted
Speaker 1: in their own history about the project that was shared
Speaker 1: with The Washington Post that the Americans were eager to
Speaker 1: spy on everybody really, enemy or ally alike. The West
Speaker 1: German officials were really they were focusing on countries that
Speaker 1: were not allies, but the Americans wanted to snoop on everybody.
Speaker 1: CIA historians, meanwhile, note that the American officials felt that
Speaker 1: the West Germans were more interested in running Crypto as
Speaker 1: a straightforward business to earn money, and they were looking
Speaker 1: at as a revenue generator, not as a way to
Speaker 1: dip into secrets. So both the CIA and the B
Speaker 1: and D would take in millions of dollars over the
Speaker 1: years as they operated Crypto, and they would pour that
Speaker 1: money into other projects around the world. So if you
Speaker 1: ever wondered how some CIA operations appeared happen under the radar,
Speaker 1: it's not all just you know, dark deals that are
Speaker 1: behind closed doors in DC. Some of that money comes
Speaker 1: straight from CIA backed operations that are appearing to be
Speaker 1: you know, honest businesses. So that's fun. We're going to
Speaker 1: take a break for actual honest businesses. But we'll be
Speaker 1: right back after these messages. So in the CIA history
Speaker 1: for this project, and I have not read the entire
Speaker 1: history because it was not made available. The Post was
Speaker 1: only granted the right to produce excerpts from the report,
Speaker 1: not the entire report. But the agency refers to Crypto
Speaker 1: with a code name. That code name is Minerva, and
Speaker 1: the project of running Crypto in an effort to to
Speaker 1: produce equipment that could be exploited around the world had
Speaker 1: two different code names. The first one was the Saurus
Speaker 1: and the second one was Rubicon. So German intelligence agents
Speaker 1: would later bring in officials from Semens the company Semens
Speaker 1: to serve as advisors, technical advisors and entrepreneurial advisors for Crypto,
Speaker 1: and in return, Siemens would get five percent of cryptos sales.
Speaker 1: The Americans, they brought in Motorola to take some of
Speaker 1: Crypto's products and to tweak them to make them work better.
Speaker 1: Make them more commercially viable. So we've got two intelligence
Speaker 1: agencies and two major companies all working together as part
Speaker 1: of this, and all indications seem to point that at
Speaker 1: least some people in those two big companies knew what
Speaker 1: was up. By the nineteen eighties, more than half of
Speaker 1: all the intelligence gathered by the CIA that came from
Speaker 1: places other than China or Russia were encrypted by crypto machines.
Speaker 1: So when you look at all the information that the
Speaker 1: CIA was bringing in, if it wasn't from Russia and
Speaker 1: if it wasn't from China, more than half of the
Speaker 1: information had passed through a crypto machine, meaning that the
Speaker 1: CIA could decrypt it and read the underlying messages. There
Speaker 1: were some times where they said that they could read
Speaker 1: messages from certain countries with eighty to ninety percent success,
Speaker 1: which is pretty phenomenal in the world of cryptography and
Speaker 1: code breaking. Well, neither Russia nor China would use crypto devices,
Speaker 1: a lot of countries that were dealing with those countries
Speaker 1: with Russia and China did use crypto devices, so the
Speaker 1: CIA was able to learn a lot about operations going
Speaker 1: on in Russia and China indirectly through that means. This
Speaker 1: is also a good time to point out a parallel
Speaker 1: in our daily lives, which is that even if the
Speaker 1: content of our messages is safe, the act of sending
Speaker 1: messages can sometimes provide enough information for people to draw
Speaker 1: some pretty accurate conclusions. It shows us that metadata is
Speaker 1: really an important thing to remember. Metadata is the information
Speaker 1: about information, and sometimes you don't need to know the
Speaker 1: content of something in order to draw some pretty damaging
Speaker 1: or valuable conclusions. I guess it all depends upon your perspective.
Speaker 1: So this is kind of an example of that that
Speaker 1: even though Russia and China weren't using crypto devices, countries
Speaker 1: that were dealing with Russia and China were, and that
Speaker 1: meant the CIA could read at least that side of
Speaker 1: the messages. In nineteen eighty one, Saudi Arabia would become
Speaker 1: the biggest crypto customer and it would play a very
Speaker 1: important role. The crypto technology play a very important role
Speaker 1: in the Middle East. This also leads to a point
Speaker 1: in the Washington Post article where the authors state that
Speaker 1: it's kind of an open question as to how much
Speaker 1: the CIA knew about different operations around the world throughout
Speaker 1: this time and what the agency did or didn't do
Speaker 1: in preparation for those events, like whether or not they
Speaker 1: should have acted in some cases, like if they were
Speaker 1: aware of an assassination attempt, did they do anything to
Speaker 1: prevent that or to let anyone know? And if not,
Speaker 1: was it just because they were worried about compromising the
Speaker 1: fact that they knew about this information. At what point
Speaker 1: does the value go away from knowing information if you
Speaker 1: don't act on that information. These are big questions that
Speaker 1: are not answered in the article, by the way, and
Speaker 1: they bring up a lot of deep ethical problems with
Speaker 1: what was going on. So crypto would also receive a
Speaker 1: lot of direction from the CIA and from B and
Speaker 1: D to actively try and disparage competitors, to essentially run
Speaker 1: marketing campaigns that said, you know, cryptography devices from such
Speaker 1: and such a company are total crap, don't buy them.
Speaker 1: Come to us by our stuff, we are secure. They
Speaker 1: also were encouraged to bribe government officials to adopt crypto tech.
Speaker 1: So there's some pretty awful stories about crypto executives doing
Speaker 1: all sorts of stuff in order to you know, bribe
Speaker 1: governments from all over the world to adopt crypto technology.
Speaker 1: Skeezy skeezee stuff really makes me proud. US President Ronald
Speaker 1: Reagan inadvertently revealed that the US had intercepted and decrypted
Speaker 1: communications out of a Libyan embassy in East Berlin to
Speaker 1: Tripoli and that tiptf Libya that something was up right,
Speaker 1: that America somehow was able to decrypt messages, and considering
Speaker 1: the company they were relying upon for their cryptography, that
Speaker 1: started to raise some doubts about Crypto's authenticity, and not
Speaker 1: just with Libya, other countries took notice too. Employees at Crypto, meanwhile,
Speaker 1: didn't know about the arrangement right. They were working under
Speaker 1: the assumption that they were actually making genuine, reliable cryptography equipment,
Speaker 1: and occasionally an employee might look at something and say, huh,
Speaker 1: this is weird based upon what I know. This algorithm
Speaker 1: we're using or this system we're using has vulnerabilities, their
Speaker 1: problems with it. We should fix those before we ship this,
Speaker 1: because we could make it more secure. They would get
Speaker 1: discouraged from doing that, they would be told not to
Speaker 1: implement solutions. In one case that went much further than that,
Speaker 1: there was an employee named Peter Fritiger who was very
Speaker 1: frustrated with what was going on. He felt that Crypto
Speaker 1: was just being complacent or maybe negligent, and not responding
Speaker 1: to very real concerns that Fritiger had with clients in Damascus.
Speaker 1: So his clients in Damascus were complaining about their stuff.
Speaker 1: So he went to Damascus and he fixed their Crypto equipment.
Speaker 1: In other words, he removed the vulnerabilities that had been
Speaker 1: engineered to go into this stuff. And the Crypto CEO
Speaker 1: at the time would fire Fritiger as a result, because
Speaker 1: Fritiger had messed things up. He had actually made what
Speaker 1: was supposed to be a secure system and actual secure system.
Speaker 1: Of course, he didn't know that that was against the
Speaker 1: goals of the operation itself, and the CIA got very
Speaker 1: mad at the CEO for Crypto at that point, saying
Speaker 1: that he should have found a way to sort of
Speaker 1: bring Friutiture in under the fold to smooth things over,
Speaker 1: rather than fire him because it brought undue scrutiny to
Speaker 1: Crypto and its activities. Crypto also hired an electrical engineer
Speaker 1: named Mindia k. Flish and I'm sure I'm butchering these names,
Speaker 1: and I do apologize that also upset the NSSA, this time,
Speaker 1: not the CIA. But this NSSA because NSA knew about
Speaker 1: this electrical engineer, and they said, she is way too smart,
Speaker 1: she's going to figure out something's going on. You should
Speaker 1: not hire her. But Crypto hired her because was brilliant
Speaker 1: and was seen as a valuable asset. Turns out she
Speaker 1: was brilliant. She still is brilliant, and she kept trying
Speaker 1: to initiate fixes and improvements because she kept finding weaknesses
Speaker 1: and vulnerabilities in the systems, but she was always discouraged
Speaker 1: from actually implementing solutions, and she wondered what was going on,
Speaker 1: but she was a little worried about speaking up because
Speaker 1: she wasn't sure exactly what the extent was. The company
Speaker 1: would actually produce a machine using an algorithm she had
Speaker 1: designed that the NSA could not crack, So the NSA
Speaker 1: reached out to the CIA, and the CIA ordered the
Speaker 1: company Crypto, to stop the manufacturing process, saying, we can't
Speaker 1: produce these machines because we can't crack the code. You
Speaker 1: got to break it. So only fifty or so of
Speaker 1: these machines were actually manufactured. The company wind up selling
Speaker 1: those to banks because the thought was, well, banks have
Speaker 1: a need for security and we don't really need to
Speaker 1: snoop on them. That's not where our concern is. But
Speaker 1: from now on, when you make this device, make it
Speaker 1: with the algorithm that's broken on purpose because we want
Speaker 1: to be able to crack those codes. That's pretty dodgy anyway.
Speaker 1: There was also a mathematics professor from Stockholm whose name
Speaker 1: I would butcher terribly. He actually studied in the United States,
Speaker 1: and his American family, like me, would have trouble saying
Speaker 1: his name, so they called him Henry Henry Vindman. He
Speaker 1: was brought in to craft more sophisticated but vulnerable algorithms,
Speaker 1: so he was actually told about the real relationship between
Speaker 1: the CIA and then B and D and crypto. He
Speaker 1: was given the inside scoop and asked to become part
Speaker 1: of the team. And his purpose was to design algorithms
Speaker 1: that looked really super secure but secretly weren't. So he
Speaker 1: was trying to make stuff that appeared to be more
Speaker 1: on the up and up, but in fact had vulnerabilities
Speaker 1: built into it, and meanwhile to have those vulnerabilities designed
Speaker 1: in such a way that it created plausible deniability. In
Speaker 1: other words, if someone found the vulnerability, you could say, oh,
Speaker 1: that's due to human error or it was an implementation error,
Speaker 1: but it was not put there on purpose, even though
Speaker 1: it toats was. The CIA used Crypto communications to suss
Speaker 1: out where Manuel Noriega was based off communications from the Vatican.
Speaker 1: They intercepted those communications, decoded them, and were able to
Speaker 1: find Noriega as a result. In nineteen ninety two, Iran
Speaker 1: arrested a Crypto salesman named Hans Buehler, and Buehler didn't
Speaker 1: know about the relationship between Crypto and the CIA or
Speaker 1: the B and D. He had no knowledge of any
Speaker 1: of that, so he was literally an innocent salesman who
Speaker 1: thought he was selling legit cryptographic equipment. Iran had figured
Speaker 1: out something was going on. They had been suspicious ever
Speaker 1: since that incident with Libya I had mentioned, and so
Speaker 1: they arrested him and they essentially tortured him for nine months.
Speaker 1: The Iran demanded a one million dollar ransom from Crypto,
Speaker 1: and the company did pay it. The CIA did not
Speaker 1: chip in because the CIA has a policy against paying ransoms.
Speaker 1: We don't negotiate with terrorists, is the way America would
Speaker 1: put it. So this guy suffered for nine months in
Speaker 1: captivity before Crypto would pay the ransom and get him back,
Speaker 1: and he legit didn't know anything. He didn't know that
Speaker 1: the relationship existed, but he certainly suspected it by the
Speaker 1: time he was released, and he was worried about the
Speaker 1: fact that this foreign government seemed to know more about
Speaker 1: the company he was working for than he did. He
Speaker 1: ended up going to the press and talking about his
Speaker 1: experiences and it caused a bit of a stir in Europe.
Speaker 1: The CIA would actually refer to this entire incident with
Speaker 1: a code name. That code name was Hydra, so that's fun.
Speaker 1: Around that same time, Germany was reunified, right the Soviet
Speaker 1: Union fol East Germany and West Germany unified into Germany.
Speaker 1: The Berlin Wall came down, and it was around that
Speaker 1: same time that the B and D felt that Crypto's
Speaker 1: usefulness had pretty much expired, that now it was more
Speaker 1: of a risk that if the full extent of B
Speaker 1: and D's involvement in Crypto's activities were known, that could
Speaker 1: put Germany at risk, and so they ended up selling
Speaker 1: off their interest in Crypto to the CIA for around
Speaker 1: seventeen million dollars. So at that point forward, Crypto operated
Speaker 1: as a CIA backed operation secretly. But yeah, CIA had
Speaker 1: full ownership from around nineteen ninety three until twenty eighteen.
Speaker 1: That's when CIA would liquidate the company and sold it
Speaker 1: off to two other companies. The reason they did that
Speaker 1: is that by the time twenty eighteen rolled around, the
Speaker 1: cryptographic community was very different. It no longer was so
Speaker 1: dependent upon standalone machines, electronic or otherwise. A lot of
Speaker 1: solutions are software based or web based. They're not based
Speaker 1: on physical equipment. So the usefulness of Crypto as a
Speaker 1: company had pretty much gone out the window. It had
Speaker 1: provided the CIA with a ton of information, but they were,
Speaker 1: you know, there's no need to keep it running, so
Speaker 1: they sold it off for parts essentially. And you know,
Speaker 1: part of me says, this is spy stuff. Of course,
Speaker 1: spies are going to be sneaky. That's what spies do.
Speaker 1: Spies operate in a way where they are trying to
Speaker 1: avoid detection while they try to figure out what everyone
Speaker 1: else knows. That is the nature of spying, and everybody
Speaker 1: does it at the same time. There's something really sinister
Speaker 1: about secretly owning a security firm and using it to
Speaker 1: do the opposite of what the security firm says. It's
Speaker 1: doing right. It says it's protecting secrets, but in reality,
Speaker 1: it's leaving those secrets open for people to see. Now,
Speaker 1: I mentioned Huawei at the beginning of this episode, and
Speaker 1: the reason I did that is because, again around the
Speaker 1: same time that this story was breaking, we were hearing
Speaker 1: about how Huawei, the Chinese company telecommunications company, has had
Speaker 1: backdoor access to networks that it has rolled out for
Speaker 1: a decade. So Huawei makes all sorts of telecommunications equipment,
Speaker 1: including components for networks. They are a leading provider for
Speaker 1: five G components, for example, and there's been a concern
Speaker 1: around much of the world, but particularly in the United States,
Speaker 1: that this would mean that Huawei as a company would
Speaker 1: have at least some capability of snooping on communications that
Speaker 1: go across those networks. And since Huawei has some connections
Speaker 1: to the communist government of China, because China requires companies
Speaker 1: that operate in China to have this connection, that that
Speaker 1: would mean that those networks would be used specifically as
Speaker 1: surveillance tools. And in America you can kind of understand
Speaker 1: where they're coming from, because that's what Americans do. Like,
Speaker 1: if you're the one who's spying on everybody, you probably
Speaker 1: are really paranoid about everyone spying on you. It's just
Speaker 1: kind of how it works. Also, again, that report showed
Speaker 1: that for ten years, Huawei actually did have that capability.
Speaker 1: Whether they did anything with it or not is still
Speaker 1: an open question. But with Huawei, the story goes that
Speaker 1: they were building in these backdoor access channels for law
Speaker 1: enforcement officials. You know, law enforcement wants to have that
Speaker 1: kind of access so that if they're conducting investigation, they
Speaker 1: can look into communications going between various suspects so that
Speaker 1: they can better do their investigations. The problem is that
Speaker 1: Huawei was not just building these in for law enforcement,
Speaker 1: but was retaining its own access to those channels. And again,
Speaker 1: whether it was using it or not, I don't know,
Speaker 1: but the story goes that they were actually retaining that ability.
Speaker 1: And this leads me to another point I want to
Speaker 1: make before I conclude, which is that backdoor channels are
Speaker 1: always a terrible idea, always, always, always, always They inherently
Speaker 1: make systems less secure. So if your job is to
Speaker 1: make a secure system, building in a way to bypass
Speaker 1: that security is you might as well not have any security.
Speaker 1: It's a terrible idea. I get it. Why law enforcement
Speaker 1: and intelligence agencies want it because information is valuable and
Speaker 1: getting access to the information could mean the difference between
Speaker 1: life or death in some cases really can. But then
Speaker 1: you know, if you have those backdoor channels, it means
Speaker 1: that you don't have to go through the whole security process,
Speaker 1: and it means that someone else might potentially discover that
Speaker 1: and exploit it. So one, you've got the danger of
Speaker 1: the authorized parties abusing this power. Right, you've got the
Speaker 1: potential for an agency committing overreach like we've heard about
Speaker 1: the NSSAY and how that agency was collecting way more
Speaker 1: information than they should have been able to, including information
Speaker 1: from people that weren't under any direct surveillance, and how
Speaker 1: that can be abused. That's a terrible thing. So you
Speaker 1: don't want that capability. You don't want the ability of
Speaker 1: some agency that had had author backdoor access to abuse
Speaker 1: that power. You also don't want some third party that
Speaker 1: is not authorized at all finding out about that back
Speaker 1: channel and figuring out how to access it, because now
Speaker 1: your secure system has no security. So I guess the
Speaker 1: end message I want to give everybody is protect yourself
Speaker 1: as best you can, which is increasingly difficult when we
Speaker 1: don't know necessarily who is behind the systems that are
Speaker 1: actually making the security we depend upon. Another great example
Speaker 1: is people have pointed out is should we trust the
Speaker 1: security company Kaspersky, which comes from Russia, or is it
Speaker 1: possible that that could be a state backed operation that
Speaker 1: is slowly or quietly sewing in vulnerabilities from people who
Speaker 1: are using its products. I have not seen any specific
Speaker 1: reports on that. I'm just seeing people ask that question.
Speaker 1: But that leads us to start asking questions about everything.
Speaker 1: Probably not a bad idea, but it starts to, you know,
Speaker 1: it starts to create this system where we're not trusting anything,
Speaker 1: and at the end of the day, you either have
Speaker 1: to figure out you've got to trust somebody, or you
Speaker 1: got to just kind of disengage, or I guess you
Speaker 1: just resign yourself that all of your stuff is going
Speaker 1: to be findable and readable by everyone at some point
Speaker 1: or another. Happy Days. I hope you enjoyed that episode
Speaker 1: of tech Stuff When Secrets Aren't Secret. Back from February seventeenth,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty. Just a quick update. Tomorrow we're going to
Speaker 1: have a special episode of a different podcast published in
Speaker 1: the tech Stuff feed is called Technically Speaking, and I
Speaker 1: hope that you enjoy it. I will be back next
Speaker 1: week with all new episodes, and I hope you're all well,
Speaker 1: and I'll talk to you again really soon. Tech Stuff
Speaker 1: is an iHeartRadio production. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.