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How can we protect ourselves from this type of interception? It seems impossible. Why would any non-american customers buy US made devices? Any protections that

How can we protect ourselves from this type of interception? It seems impossible. Why would any non-american customers buy US made devices? Any protections that are added can/will be bypassed if the US gov gets physical access (or even remote). It seems like our US vendors are going to take a hit from this.

throw_90u1d20j9 12y ago
Yes, but not immediately, since the NSA thing came as a surprise, so: a. nobody had a plan to switch at that time. b. foreign companies did not know they might be able to compete simply for privacy reasons. I think this will change over the next decade. People move slowly, but now that the trust is lost, it will be difficult to restore, even if the US government would act. (They won't.)
- liotier 12y ago
  > b. foreign companies did not know they might be able > to compete simply for privacy reasons. Tell that to employees of companies such as Airbus... They have always assumed that they were under constant attack from government-level entities, with good reason.
  - john_b 12y ago
    An exception or two to the rule does not invalidate the rule. Most ordinary commercial businesses using US-made devices or online services don't deal with technology their government considers a national asset, and as a result don't have to be as paranoid as Airbus, BAE, Petrobras, etc.
bediger4000 12y ago
If some product (router, cell phone, heck, even a cable or power supply) where designed to be amenable to physical inspection, a lot of the weirder anti-air-gap NSA spying would be possible to verify against. I mean, a USB cable with a clear silicone strain guard would show you that some of the taps don't exist. Verifiable builds, and open-source software would take away the potential of a lot of the rootkit-like taps. The big issue is the BIOS-level, DMA-level and hidden-disk-storage (host protected area). Perhaps using Linux BIOS, with verifiable builds, would protect against some of that. Naturally, hardware like the Broadcom network adapters that have their own Mips CPU is right out: peripherals would have to be demonstrably "dumb" to fit in this sort of system. Perhaps shipping components and requiring some self-assembly would help. Certainly, you'd have to have enough documentation to ensure that no weird extra chips are soldered on, and design so that chips can be verified by the users. All of these things mitigate against, but don't eliminate the spying.

throw_90u1d20j9 12y ago

Yes, but not immediately, since the NSA thing came as a surprise, so: a. nobody had a plan to switch at that time. b. foreign companies did not know they might be able to compete simply for privacy reasons. I think this will change over the next decade. People move slowly, but now that the trust is lost, it will be difficult to restore, even if the US government would act. (They won't.)

liotier 12y ago
> b. foreign companies did not know they might be able > to compete simply for privacy reasons. Tell that to employees of companies such as Airbus... They have always assumed that they were under constant attack from government-level entities, with good reason.
- john_b 12y ago
  An exception or two to the rule does not invalidate the rule. Most ordinary commercial businesses using US-made devices or online services don't deal with technology their government considers a national asset, and as a result don't have to be as paranoid as Airbus, BAE, Petrobras, etc.

bediger4000 12y ago

If some product (router, cell phone, heck, even a cable or power supply) where designed to be amenable to physical inspection, a lot of the weirder anti-air-gap NSA spying would be possible to verify against. I mean, a USB cable with a clear silicone strain guard would show you that some of the taps don't exist. Verifiable builds, and open-source software would take away the potential of a lot of the rootkit-like taps. The big issue is the BIOS-level, DMA-level and hidden-disk-storage (host protected area). Perhaps using Linux BIOS, with verifiable builds, would protect against some of that. Naturally, hardware like the Broadcom network adapters that have their own Mips CPU is right out: peripherals would have to be demonstrably "dumb" to fit in this sort of system. Perhaps shipping components and requiring some self-assembly would help. Certainly, you'd have to have enough documentation to ensure that no weird extra chips are soldered on, and design so that chips can be verified by the users. All of these things mitigate against, but don't eliminate the spying.