Deniability
|
|
In politics and espionage, deniability is the ability of a powerful player or actor to avoid blowback by secretly arranging for an action to be taken on their behalf by a third party.
The necessary act is farmed out or delegated to a third party ostensibly unconnected with the major player. This can take the form of a private person or mercenary being hired to carry out a task, or a government or agency being asked or compelled to do you a quiet favor.
One problem with being "deniable" is that not only are you on your own if you get in trouble, but your own employer has a positive motive to betray you to prevent you from talking about your actions on their behalf.
One way of concealing sources and methods is to use deniable assets on your behalf. The assets use different techniques than your own, and while their actions may be motivated by information from your sources, you have the chance to sanitize any information before you give it to them.
Use in computer networks
In computer networks, deniability often refers to a situation where a person can deny transmitting a file, even when it is proven to come from their computer.
Normally, this is done by setting the computer to automatically relay certain types of broadcast, in such a way that the original transmitter of a file is indistinguishable from those who are merely relaying it. In this way, the person who first transmitted the file can claim that their computer had merely relayed it from elsewhere, and this claim cannot be disproven without a complete decrypted log of all network connections to and from that person's computer.
Use in cryptography
In cryptography, deniable encryption may be used to describe steganographic techniques, where the very existence of an encrypted file or message is deniable in the sense that an adversary cannot prove that an encrypted message exists.
Some systems take this further, such as MaruTukku archives which contain multiple encrypted archives. The owner of the archive may reveal one or more keys to decrypt certain information from the archive, and then deny that more keys exist, a statement which cannot be disproven without knowledge of all encryption keys involved. The existence of data in this archive is then deniable in the sense that it cannot be proven to exist.
Deniability in fiction
Deniability is a popular concept in suspense fiction and thrillers:
- The Mission: Impossible team was deniable, as "the Secretary will disavow any knowledge of your actions if you are caught or killed."
- In Clear and Present Danger, military orders are concealed in such a way as to let each commander in turn deny that they ordered a particular mission
- A series of novels has been written by Andy McNab about the fictional operative Nick Stone, a deniable "K" operator for British Intelligence.