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The Network Is Hostile

Posted by Soulskill on from the in-defense-of-tinfoil-hats dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Following this weekend's news that AT&T was as friendly with the NSA as we've suspected all along, cryptographer Matthew Green takes a step back to look at the broad lessons we've learned from the NSA leaks. He puts it simply: the network is hostile — and we really understand that now. "My take from the NSA revelations is that even though this point was 'obvious' and well-known, we've always felt it more intellectually than in our hearts. Even knowing the worst was possible, we still chose to believe that direct peering connections and leased lines from reputable providers like AT&T would make us safe. If nothing else, the NSA leaks have convincingly refuted this assumption." Green also points out that the limitations on law enforcement's data collection are technical in nature — their appetite for surveillance would be even larger if they had the means to manage it. "...it's significant that someday a large portion of the world's traffic will flow through networks controlled by governments that are, at least to some extent, hostile to the core values of Western democracies."

4 of 124 comments (clear)

  1. Hostile governments... by Todd+Knarr · · Score: 5, Informative

    "...it's significant that someday a large portion of the world's traffic will flow through networks controlled by governments that are, at least to some extent, hostile to the core values of Western democracies."

    And some of those will be the governments of Western democracies. That's the truly maddening part.

    1. Re:Hostile governments... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      because one of the worst of offenders is also one of the weakest, gridlocked western 'democratic' governments, and not the more powerful socialistic governments?

  2. Re:Safe from what? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    When one shares on a network it is with direct parties and security can be implemented to restrict who shares what with who. The problem is the NSA et. al. are third party leeches siphoning off the data, storing it, cataloging it, and exploiting it - and breaking any security in place to achieve this end.

    That ain't sharing, champ.

  3. Re:Enough with the "democracy=freedom" tripe by liquid_schwartz · · Score: 4, Informative
    The US has officially been proven to be an oligarchy as described here:

    http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746

    The actual paper if here:

    http://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf