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Only partly. It still leaves header information open, so the government is still able to see who you talk to. Through traffic analysis they can see what groups
by CWuestefeld 17y ago
Only partly. It still leaves header information open, so the government is still able to see who you talk to. Through traffic analysis they can see what groups you're likely to sympathize with, even if they can't see the membership roles. And they're able to tell when those groups are planning something, even if they don't know what.
- dantheman 17y agoExactly, this is what the NSA wiretapping case was about. They weren't listening in on all the calls, they were gathering information on who was calling who and for how long. This is the most traditional wiretap because it requires a lot less effort and provides a lot of information.
- jacquesm 17y agoIn fact, 'traffic analysis' is exactly what you would use to focus the actual decryption power available to you towards the more likely sources of paydirt. And storing all email until you might want to decrypt it would be another possibility, though that might be prohibitively expensive. This is actually one of the few cases where spam has a net positive effect, increasing the size of the haystack considerably.