Plausible deniability

Plausible deniability (also: Plausible deniability, plausible deniability English ) is a concept to avoid traces that make a forensically provable facts. In the best case, a plausible alibi is even created.

The opposite concept is the liability or non-repudiation, which can be implemented cryptographically example, on computers.

Plausible deniability continues to play a role in the context of corruption in the political sphere: A person or organization can only escape the corruption accusation, if they can deny the satisfaction that there might have been opportunities for corruption. This is achieved by the accused or by creating transparency.

Policy

Plausible deniability refers to the policy, a doctrine that was developed in the USA in the 1950s and in the Central Intelligence Agency ( CIA) the then newly founded was used.

According to the doctrine of management structures and chains of command should be so loose and informal, that they could easily be denied in case of need. How about a coordinated Operations Coordinating Board, a National Security Council connected secret committee, covert CIA operations or programs, such as MKULTRA. A representative of the U.S. President in this board, a function that took under President Eisenhower of politicians and industrialists Nelson Rockefeller, it allowed the President to stay always informed about covert operations and at the same time against the U.S. Congress a " credible deniability " for the partly to protect illegal actions. This should be to achieve that the CIA politically sensitive jobs of power sources by up could be granted to the president himself. The author or the sheer existence of these orders should be able to be denied when a covert operation failed or if the political damage was feared that if an official body took over the responsibility. This strategy was later applied to other organizations.

The doctrine has several disadvantages. First, it is an open door for abuse of power. It presupposes that the organizations concerned can claim that they had acted independently. This runs inevitably boils down that they can actually act independently, because each instrument of control, which limited the independence, would also be useful in uncovering delicate arrangements. Where an inspection is limited to a posteriori information requirement of the organization, as the recipient of the information on voluntary statements is dependent that are incomplete or false in case of doubt.

Finally, the doctrine often worked in the past, not when it was applied: the denial of facts was not plausible. Independent media and the public saw through the real contexts. Critics call the plausible deniability as a form of hypocrisy or as deliberate disinformation.

The best known example of the failure of the strategy is the Watergate scandal, in which it is not, the government, President Richard Nixon to relieve you of the responsibility for the scandal. Another example is the Iran - Contra Affair, during which the responsible security adviser John Poindexter took upon himself all responsibility and thus the President Ronald Reagan relieved. But Poindexters statements undermined the authority of the President: You conveyed the image that it had lost control.

Information Technology

In information technology mechanisms for credible deniability in anonymous peer-to -peer networks, or generally with data encryption are employed in order to deny the origin or the presence of information. There are methods to hide sensitive data or the origin of data, so that its existence or origin can not be demonstrated.

An early implementation of contestable credible encryption offered in 1997, developed by Julian Assange, Suelette Dreyfus and Ralf Weinmann file system Rubber Hose. More famous, recent examples are the anonymous, censorship -resistant network Tor and Freenet and file encryption software TrueCrypt FreeOTFE and. Also the encryption principle of Off- the-Record Messaging ( OTR) ensures credible deniability.