The FBI's Use of Remote Key-Logging Technology
The FBI's use of remote key-logging technology indeed raises difficult privacy issues for law enforcement, the courts, and American citizens in particular ("High-Tech FBI Tactics Raise Privacy Questions," Aug 14 at A1). Despite prosecutors' pleas and sworn affidavits, there is nothing "new" or "secret" about capturing the keystrokes of a computer user as he types. Why, an FBI employee, or even a nosy neighbor, using what is known as a "van Eck receiver," could be capturing this letter in real-time, right now, as I type it! And how short our memories are! Only a few years ago, the Post reported that the FBI had remotely bugged Aldrich Ames' home computer to capture his keystrokes before he encrypted the files!
The problem of extraneous electronic signals being emitted by computer keystrokes and monitors was demonstrated publically for the first time in 1985 when a Dutch engineer, Wim van Eck, demonstrated the simplicity of passive electromagnetic eavesdropping for the BBC with a rather elegant and simple device constructed from a portable television set and a dipole antenna with a 75 ohm balance transformer - the kind we used to screw to the backs of our old TV's to hook them up to cable, video games (remember Mattel's "Intellivision"?) or Betamaxes. The unit had a voltage-controlled tuner, built with parts available at any television repair shop or Radio Shack and had an effective range of 20-40 feet, depending on construction of the building in which the targeted computer was located. The BBC selected Scotland Yard - and van Eck's receiver captured a typist's keystrokes, key-by-key, letter-by-letter, just as described in the Post's article.
The problem of remote interception of electronic keystrokes actually goes back to the late 1960s, when the Defense Department and the National Security Agency discovered that the keystrokes for the IBM Selectric typewriter (the one with the ball) could be read remotely using similar technology. DoD (and presumably other departments which handle sensitive information) then began building special rooms - essentially giant Faraday cages - as part of a joint DoD/NSA project called TEMPEST (Transient Pulse Emanation Standard) to protect secure document preparation and electronic communications.
The problems of electronic computer "leakage" were well-described (including instructions on how to build a van Eck receiver) in the Winter 1988 issue of the computer journal Abacus (Vol. 5, No. 2 at p. 10), and later, in less detail, in Wynn Schwartau's prescient 1994 book Information Warfare.
If the judge in the Scarfo case needs some objective information to help decide whether this technology is truly as "secret" as the government claims, I would be more than happy to share the above open-source information with the Court - with copies to the defense and the prosecution, of course. Fair is fair. The government should not be allowed to hide open-source information behind a transparent curtain and then order nobody to look at it!
G. Jack King, Jr.
Vice-Chair, Freedom of Information Act Committee
National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers
