I have been connecting to IRC using SSL for well over a decade. SASL authentication is also a thing for many years now (and most clients support it out of the b

I have been connecting to IRC using SSL for well over a decade. SASL authentication is also a thing for many years now (and most clients support it out of the box). There are channel settings one can set to prohibit people entering from non-secure connections as well (in cases where the network still allows non-ssl connections). However it's not unreasonable to assume that most three-letter agencies (and perhaps some companies) will simply have bots silently sitting in most large public channels (if those channels don't have public logs anyway).