[27571] in North American Network Operators' Group

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Re: government eavesdropping

daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Brian Wallingford)
Thu Feb 24 23:05:47 2000

Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2000 23:03:44 -0500 (EST)
From: Brian Wallingford <brian@meganet.net>
To: William Allen Simpson <wsimpson@greendragon.com>
Cc: Jeff Ogden <jogden@merit.edu>, nanog@merit.edu
In-Reply-To: <38B571AF.7E73897C@greendragon.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.10.10002242231120.8533-100000@cerise>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Errors-To: owner-nanog-outgoing@merit.edu


: > 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.

Specifically, what have Merit, and presumably yourself done that any
reasonably clued ISP hasn't?  Aside from responsible subneting, and
standard non-intrusive filtering, what can be done?  It seems to me that
beyond that, the burden of safeguarding data falls on the end-user.

-brian



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