[27570] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: government eavesdropping
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (William Allen Simpson)
Thu Feb 24 22:18:59 2000
Message-ID: <38B571AF.7E73897C@greendragon.com>
Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2000 13:00:37 -0500
From: William Allen Simpson <wsimpson@greendragon.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: Jeff Ogden <jogden@merit.edu>
Cc: nanog@merit.edu
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Errors-To: owner-nanog-outgoing@merit.edu
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?
>
The US government has had listening devices at the MAEs/NAPs for years.
They have also patented techniques for sorting and classifying
conversations, which appear to be applicable to Internet traffic.
As for other governments, haven't you heard Moscowitz's Chrysler story?
> Have I been misleading people?
>
While Merit has done an admirable job internally of organizing its
networks, so that customer traffic doesn't pass by client machines
and would be difficult to monitor, other ISPs and companies are not
so diligent.
WSimpson@UMich.edu
Key fingerprint = 17 40 5E 67 15 6F 31 26 DD 0D B9 9B 6A 15 2C 32
