"Is Big Brother reading my -mails?" Arno Wagner and Thomas Dübendorfer from the ETH Institute of Technical Informatics and Communication Networks (TIK) tried to answer this question during their talk on 9th April at the ETH. Wagner: "Most of us send totally unprotected e-mails, without thinking about all the people that could read them during the transmission process." This facilitates the work carried out by intelligence agencies and industrial espionage. During their talk, part of a lecture series "Showcase" by ETH World, Wagner and Dübendorfer demonstrated how easily non-encoded e-mails can be intercepted and read without additional hardware.

Anyone wishing to encode their e-mails needs to install an additional programme, such as the – in the meantime – legendary PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) with which encoding then usually happens directly in the customary e-mail programme. This is not always simple at the ETH, which forbids most users to install their own programmes, and where encoding programmes are often lacking in standard installations.

Like listening to a talk in one's own living room: the audience sat in comfortable, air-filled armchairs. large

ETH users do not have access to encoding tools for Mail-Webaccess either. Daniel Wunderli, head of central mail services, explains "copies out" any encoded attachments that it cannot decode for reasons of safety. The "missing attachment" is replaced by a marker. The danger is that messages arrive without encoded attachment. "At the moment, lack of interest or a mandate to undertake action means that the informatics services do not consider it a main priority to set up an infrastructure that would provide the possibilities for encoded mailing" says Wunderli. A further problem is that, before data can begin to be exchanged, a consensus must be reached on a uniform encoding technique.

Arno Wagner (left) and Thomas Dübendorfer show how simple techniques can encode e-mails. large

Andreas Dudler, Director of ETH-Informatics Services: "The problem today is that while encoding is dependable, authenticity is not usually guaranteed. This would call for work-intensive processes." Once the message has been encoded, the question arises as to the security of the code. According to Arno Wagner one of the main dangers arises from wrong handling of the technique. If security measures are adhered to in the use of EC cards, the transmission is safe from most assaults. Whether Secret Service e-mails that are encoded with PGP, for example, can be decoded is controversial. The problem is that these circles do not wish it to be known, under any circumstances, what possibilities they have at their disposal.

I n answer to a question from the audience, Wagner said that he would be surprised to hear that such a data spy could read more than a few e-mails in a day. This would only be possible if Secret Service research was far more advanced than we are led to believe by what is published. "It's not totally improbable", he added, "then it is a known fact that the NSA (National Security Agency in the USA) is the biggest single employer of mathematicians in the world."

It is not only in the domain of e-mails that privacy is threatened. More and more communication networks are introducing so-called Wireless-LANs (WLAN) with which listening in on data streams can be quite trivial simply by accessing the transmission medium. If, for example Ms X sends a print command via WLAN to her printer, the data can, in principal, be intercepted and stored by any computer in the vicinity that has the necessary hardware and software.

This can quickly become a serious security problem, especially for firms that deal in sensitive data. This is why more and more encoding technology is being installed. The data can still be intercepted but only decoded with difficulty. Big brother can read the data but can't understand the message.