North American Network Operators Group

Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical

Re: government eavesdropping

  • From: Jim Mercer
  • Date: Thu Feb 24 09:08:02 2000

On Thu, Feb 24, 2000 at 08:21:13AM -0500, Jeff Ogden wrote:
> So what is the real story here?  Is all, most, some of our 
> international Internet traffic being intercepted by various 
> governments?  Is it only international traffic that is at issue or is 
> domestic traffic within the US subject to routine eavesdropping 
> without a court order?

i have been operating under the assumption that someone, somewhere could be
listening in on the traffic of the internet.

it could be government (local or foreign).
it could be a script kiddie that managed to weasel into a core facility
without being noticed.
it could be an employee of a core facility doing it on a whim.

these days i don't imagine it would be difficult to weed through the traffic
and narrow the focus down to individual users or groups of users.

i guess the trick is to make sure that you don't become a target.

either don't say/do anyting that would make you a target or become more
vigilent about using ssh/pgp/ssl/etc/etc in your communications.

-- 
[ Jim Mercer                 [email protected]              +1 416 506-0654 ]
[          Reptilian Research -- Longer Life through Colder Blood          ]
[  Don't be fooled by cheap Finnish imitations; BSD is the One True Code.  ]