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

Fri Nov 1 17:08:59 UTC 2013

On Fri, Nov 1, 2013 at 4:43 AM, Anthony Junk <anthonyrjunk at gmail.com> wrote:
...
> It seems as if both Yahoo and Google assumed that since they were private
> circuits that they didn't have to encrypt.

I actually cannot see them assuming that.  Google
and Yahoo engineers are smart, and taping fibres
has been well known for, well, "forever".  I can
see them making a business decision that the
costs would be excessive to mitigate against
taping(*) that would be allowed under the laws
in any event.

Gary

(*) "A" mitigation  was run the fibre through your
own pressured pipe which you monitored for loss
of pressure, so that even a "hot tap" on the pipe
itself would possibly be detected (and there are
countermeasures to countermeasures
to countermeasures of the various methods).
And even then, you had to have a someone walk
the path from time to time to verify its integrity.
And I am pretty sure there is even an NSA/DOD
doc on the requirements/implementation to do
those mitigations.