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Do those come with pre attached NSA listening devices [1] ? [1] https://siliconangle.com/2013/07/19/how-the-nsa-taps-undersea-fiber-optic-cables/ https://silic
by sschueller 6y ago
Do those come with pre attached NSA listening devices [1] ?
[1] https://siliconangle.com/2013/07/19/how-the-nsa-taps-undersea-fiber-optic-cables/ https://siliconangle.com/2013/07/19/how-the-nsa-taps-underse...
- gnu8 6y agoMost certainly. You don’t land a cable in either the US or France without a classified annex to the license that provides for interconnection to their intelligence services.
- _Understated_ 6y agoLet's say they do tap the cables (I reckon they do too but in case they don't) what can they actually see if the traffic is encrypted?
- ssijak 6y agoAnd at 250tb passing by every second
- Keyframe 6y agoConsidering they do intercept, as widely documented, question is how do they see if traffic is encrypted?
- jagger27 6y agoPretty trivial. If it looks like random noise, and doesn't have a compression header then it's probably encrypted.
- eric-hu 6y agoI recall seeing a story in the past about how the NSA planted a misleadingly weak encryption library. https://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/2014/10/new_evidence_of_nsa_weakening.html https://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/2014/10/new_evidence_of... If the encryption used is flawed, they could see whatever they want.
- jagger27 6y agoSource, destination, message length, etc. Lots of interesting meta data to play with.
- lallysingh 6y agoassuming there isn't a point-to-point encryption layer for the whole cable.
- jagger27 6y agoSure, but the NSA tap probably sits just after that point.
- temp0826 6y agoI’d love to see wireshark running on a saturated 250Tbps link
- gspr 6y agoNobody knows. Probably not. But Snowden showed us that a lot of it is scooped up and warehoused. Maybe they can see your traffic in a decade or two?
- xbmcuser 6y agoForget encryption every second so much data passes through at a time can they even isolate particular data let alone encrypted data. Can they process all that data in real time if not how are they storing it to process later. This is just 1 cable from 1 company there are now dozens of cables of different companies.
- vngzs 6y ago> so much data passes through at a time can they even isolate particular data let alone encrypted data. They can't. That's why they call it "bulk collection." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUSCULAR_(surveillance_program) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUSCULAR_(surveillance_program...
- throw0101a 6y ago> what can they actually see if the traffic is encrypted? They can see who is talking to who, and when: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_analysis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_analysis
- londons_explore 6y agoThere's a reason the vast majority of undersea cables have at least one end in a Five Eyes country. No need to tap it in the middle of the ocean then!
- actuator 6y agoEven if this is true, I think the simple reason might be that one of the five eyes country is US, which is probably the global hub for data and services used throughout the world. Also, Britain being near entrance of Europe from Atlantic, and Australia being near Asia would make economical sense for the cables to take that path.
- eeZah7Ux 6y agoFalse. Snowden revelations clearly indicated that tapping undersea cables is (unsurprisingly) difficult to detect. A lot of surveillance is done both *illegally* and secretly. Forcing carriers to install black boxes next to their routers is not always the preferred choice.
- londons_explore 6y agoYou are missing the fact that most undersea cables get tapped multiple times. Five Eyes normally inspects the data on land, but enemies will do undersea taps. While a cable is being tapped, there will be a suspicious change in signal strength, and various signal reflections will tell the cable operators where the tap is. Thats bad for a spy agency who want to remain undetected. Instead, they break the cable in three points deliberately. The middle point is where they put the tap, and the spy agency will repair it. The points either side are simply so that the cable operators don't know where the tap has been inserted, and have to be repaired by the cable operator. That gets expensive, since it will typically happen 3 or 4 times for a new cable install (3 or 4 countries want access to the data). Cable repair operations are typically public knowledge (they require specialized ships), so anyone who fancies can crunch the data and see how often a cable breaks in multiple places before being repaired to know how often it's tapped... Mediterranean cables seem to see the most taps.
- deelowe 6y agoThe cable itself? Almost certainly not. They don't need to. It terminates in the US.