Re: Spy Agency Mined Vast Data Trove

[Raj Mathur <raju () linux-delhi org>]

> > > > > "Michael" == Michael Tewner <tewner () jct ac il> writes:

    Michael> [snip]

    Michael> getting to the point: It's pretty obvious that the
    Michael> government here taps the 'net. It should be no surprise
    Michael> that the US listens in on traffic; they've been doing it
    Michael> for years - ECHELON (as mentioned below). I have a few
    Michael> ideas of my own that might even make it simpler for
    Michael> them. The moral of the story is to use encryption
    Michael> wherever necessary. Telnet, non-anon ftp, and rsh don't
    Michael> get used anymore. Hell, why not try sniffing for CVS
    Michael> passwords? Public WiFi access? Only through an encrypted
    Michael> tunnel.

I'd go one step further and change that to:

``The moral of the story is to use encryption wherever unnecessary and
necessary.''

Why make it simple to decide which data streams to sniff?  Sure, use
encryption to transfer your credit card numbers and your passwords;
however don't forget to also use it to write ``Hello'' to your Mom,
``Me too'' mails to AOL and ``A/S/L?'' to IRC channels.  At the very
least you'll be helping the hardware manufacturers by forcing Echelon
to install more compute farms :)

Regards,

-- Raju
-- 
Raj Mathur                raju () kandalaya org      http://kandalaya.org/
       GPG: 78D4 FC67 367F 40E2 0DD5  0FEF C968 D0EF CC68 D17F
                      It is the mind that moves
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