When Far End Technology Creates Big Dilemmas !

IN BELGIUM , ENCRYPTION FORCE RISES...

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A 600 year-old university in Leuven Belgium , has become an unexpected battleground in the fight between privacy advocates and those who think governments and law enforcement need more powerful online surveillance .

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Tucked in the woods outside this medieval Dutch-speaking Flanders , the electrical-engineering department of Katholieke Universiteit Leuven is home to the Computer Security and Industrial Cryptography group or COSIC .

Led by Bart Preneel , a cryptography professor and  outspoken privacy stalwart , the group has grown over the last 15 years into one of the world's top research centers for digital encryption .

Mr. Preneel is considered a hero by privacy advocates who see encryption as a way of keeping out the prying eyes of governments and police .

Dan Boneh , who heads the applied cryptography group at Stanford University's computer -science department , calls Leuven a " powerhouse of cryptography ."

But critics see Mr. Preneel and some of his work at Leuven as a threat , worried that today's explosion of readily accessible encryption software is making it harder for law enforcement andgovernments to thwart or track down perpetrators of crime and terror .

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Mr Preneel bristles at characterizations that he is somehow working at cross purposes with law enforcement or governments .

" I'm not of the WikiLeaks principle that everything should be

open , " he said in a recent interview , referring to the group that has published reams of classified government documents in recent years .

" Governments need to do some things in secret . On the other hand , citizens need to be able to do some things in secret legitimately ."

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Encryption , which protects online communication and data from being intercepted , has become a key component of today's digital economy .

It is also a crucial safeguard against hacking for more gadgets , from cellphones to cars .

But government intelligence agencies and law-enforcement officials fear sophisticated encryption can get in the way of detecting crime and terrorism .

Governments and corporations , meanwhile , have sought to develop or buy the best encryption around to protect their own secrets or products . Some of them have come to Mr.Preneel for help . His labs are partly self-financed , with the rest coming from the Belgian government .

Packed with hardware and laptop-wielding students in jeans and sneakers , they develop new encryption for corporate clients , or test their in-house antihacking technology .

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Some clients are longer term , others come for specific issues .

The lab has done work for Dutch chip giant NXP ,Sony Corp , and Unilever Group , he says .Sony and Unilever didn't respond on requests to comment .

Mr Preneel also said Intel Corp. is partly funding his lab's research into how to shield different apps on a smartphone so that they can't steal data from eachother , or siphon off data from the phone's user .

Intel didn't respond on requests for comment...

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BLOGGER'S COMMENT ON THIS STORY...

We live in " strange times "..right  ?

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