>> These are two competing claims Steve Gibson has proposed a scenario that makes both claims credible: that the NSA has installed fiber optic splitters (hence

>> These are two competing claims Steve Gibson has proposed a scenario that makes both claims credible: that the NSA has installed fiber optic splitters (hence the name "prism") directly upstream from Google, Apple, etc and therefore can sniff all the packets headed to their servers without their knowledge. Notes from Gibson's podcast: https://www.grc.com/sn/sn-408.txt https://www.grc.com/sn/sn-408.txt This scenario would be a large expansion of what Mark Klein testified was being done at AT&T in 2006 (https://www.eff.org/files/filenode/att/presskit/ATT_onepager.pdf https://www.eff.org/files/filenode/att/presskit/ATT_onepager...). It would also explain why the NSA slides showed service providers being added gradually: it would take time to carry out these secret installations. If Gibson's analysis is right, Google et al would have no knowledge of the taps, yet the NSA would have most of their traffic. Yes, SSL traffic is still impenetrable. However, 1) it can be stored for cracking in the future (perhaps in the Bluffdale facility) and 2) lots of traffic, like email traveling between hosts, is not encrypted.