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