latest Snowden docs show NSA intercepts all Google and Yahoo DC-to-DC traffic

Fri Nov 1 00:53:05 UTC 2013

On Thu, Oct 31, 2013 at 7:24 PM, Matthew Petach <mpetach at netflight.com>wrote:

> On Thu, Oct 31, 2013 at 7:02 AM, Ray Soucy <rps at maine.edu> wrote:
> > Was the unplanned L3 DF maintenance that took place on Tuesday a frantic
> > removal of taps? :-)
>
No need for intrusive techniques such as direct taps:
>
> http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/articleDetails.jsp?reload=true&arnumber=1494884
>

For shame.... you've  sent in a link to some article behind a paywall, with
some insane download fee.
Which is an equivalent of hand-waving.

They must be hiding their content,  for fear that flaws be pointed out.

"Of all the techniques, the bent fiber tap is the most easily deployed with
> minimal risk of damage or detection. The paper quantifies the bend loss
> required to
> tap a signal propagating in a single mode fiber"
>

There will be some wavelengths of light, that may be on the cable, that
bending won't get a useful signal from.

Bending the cable sufficiently to  break  the total internal reflection
 property,  and allow light to leak --  will generate power losses in the
cable,  that can be identified  on an OTDR.

> Matt
>
--
-JH