[ih] Yasha Levine's Surveillance Valley: The Secret Military History of the Internet -- Some Questions

[Bill Ricker]

Vint replied (not shouting) --

> NO, IT WAS END-TO-END, SO THE MILNET LINKS WERE NOT
> ENCRYPTED IF MEMORY SERVES. THE HOSTS ON EITHER
> END OF THE PRIVATE LINE INTERFACE HAD ALL THEIR TRAFFIC
> ENCRYPTED. OF COURSE IT STAYED ENCRYPTED AS IT TRAVERSED
> THE INTERVENING IMPS OF THE MILNET AND/OR ARPANET.
> MILNET DID NOT COME INTO EXISTENCE UNTIL THE TCP/IP
> FLAG DAY, JANUARY 1983 BY THE WAY.

I stand corrected that i shouldn't have referred to the PLI-eligible
Military hosts attached to on NCP (D)ARPAnet as MILNET.
:-)

Ok, for this thread OP request :
Were the PLI in use pre-TCP ?
Did the PLI  have a bypass or null-key option to allow a host
(rebooted to sanitzed state with classified files off-line) to connect
to the normal, PLI-less ARPAnet hosts ?


(-: We could say the PLI were the original VPN or rather Virtual Sub Nets :-)

So sending an INTEL file from a PLI host to an MIT host just wouldn't
work, unless the MIT host temporarily was connected via a PLI with
matching key, which would involve shenanigans strange even by MIT or
Community standards.

Maybe NATICK LABS is involved, per article referenced in OP, because
file was sent via PLI to them (when did they get a host?) and moved
tapes from there to MIT?
(As long as the orginating branch had provided waivers it might even
have been vaguely legal to read the tape at MIT?)
(Courier with 6 tapes in a bag on the night train still better bandwidth?)

One could have sent an UNCLASS file to MIT from an UNCLASS host at Ft
Meade (mentioned in the article), but file would have to be downgraded
from NSA system of origin to //UNCLASS//FOUO// in order to put it onto
the rare, air-gapped UNCLASS system that was connected to the net
normally (no PLI).
Doing that with actual INTEL DB would still be have been wrong, in
addition to whether it was (im)properly gathered or not.

( Alas the Ft Meade Unclass system that I remember on the net,
DOCKMASTER MULTICS, is documented as being a 1984 install. Also one of
the last MULTICs to be turned off, 1998. So it was never on NCP
ARPAnet.)

What was DOCKMASTER's precursor in the NET-facing role at Ft Meade,
and how early?
That is relevant to (in)validating the clippings referenced in OP.

> DEPENDING ON THE KEYS USES, THE PLI WAS
> ABLE TO CARRY AT LEAST TS AND POSSIBLY SCI.

Oh, interesting, I'd forgotten that.

If there were Spooks doing _remote_ collaboration with social
scientists early enough to be relevant to OP query re AGILE+CAM,
they'd have to have been PLI customers, except for very general
UNCLASS support/research work.

(Presumably the several communities still had need for PLI's for their
system-high subnet, once the //UNCLASS//FOUO// TCP/IP MILNET was
separated from ARPAnet.)

//bill