Forwarded From: alan l cottrell <acottrellat_private> HACKERS LIKELY TO COPY CLINTON TESTIMONY (MIAMI HERALD): The word from the shadowy world of private espionage is that a tape of President Clinton's video grand-jury testimony on Monday morning will be in someone's hands by Monday night. The only foolproof way to avoid this, private investigators said, is to do exactly what the president doesn't want to do: Be in the same room as the jury. "I have no doubt that five minutes after his testimony is finished, a video copy of it will be made somewhere. The question is, by who?" said Jim Atkinson, head of the Granite Island Group, a Massachusetts high-tech security firm. True, making the tape would be illegal, a violation of federal wiretapping laws. That wouldn't necessarily stop someone from doing it, of course. And a potential market could exist from a news organization or others interested in the Clinton presidency. The plan Monday is to have prosecutors question the president in the White House map room. The jurors, sitting a mile away in the federal courthouse, will watch on real-time, closed-circuit video. Jurors will be able to ask questions of the president. The White House asked for this setup to avoid the spectacle of the president going to the courthouse. But investigators said eavesdropping technology has developed to the point that if the president's words are transmitted in any form -- including scrambled computer code over phone lines -- they can be intercepted. Neither the White House nor independent counsel Kenneth Starr's office would disclose technical arrangements for the testimony. Several television news producers said they would seriously consider airing a tape leaked from inside the grand-jury investigation. But what about on that was the product of electronic espionage? "Journalistically, the inclination would be to use it," said Tom Hannon, political coverage director for CNN. "But this would be an issue decided at the highest levels of our company and would largely be a decision by our lawyers." Security specialists assume the video signal will be sent out on one of the White House's existing fiber-optic lines, then through a central switchboard in Washington and on to the courthouse. Professional hackers said this network can be patched into and the transmission of the president's testimony readily identified amid the thousands of signals pulsing through the lines. As in the case with most White House communications, the signal will be scrambled to a secret code, then reassembled on the other end by a device programmed to read the code, a security measure known as encryption. But investigators do not see this as a major problem. "There are entire agencies dedicated to breaking encrypted information," security expert Rick Orloff said. "Given the resources, anything can be broken." -o- Subscribe: mail majordomoat_private with "subscribe isn". Today's ISN Sponsor: New Dimensions International [www.newdimensions.net]
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