South African authorities admit to mass surveillance
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Re: South African authorities admit to mass surveillance
#2> worrying is that the SSA has said that such surveillance and data collection is "common practice" globally
I think if you believe that any major country is not intercepting all undersea fibre cable traffic within their reach or even beyond it then you’re being very naive. I can’t understand how this news would surprise anyone.
Re: South African authorities admit to mass surveillance
#3Assume all Internet connections are party lines and just encrypt all the things.
Re: South African authorities admit to mass surveillance
#4I’m no big fan of recent Google, but huge thank you to them for driving a push towards https by default
Re: South African authorities admit to mass surveillance
#5Wasn't it 6 years ago when Snowden made public his revelations and Google said 'nope' and encrypted the lot? Who now sends traffic over these links and doesn't encrypt them?
So, what value do the SA government have in intercepting these links now?
Re: South African authorities admit to mass surveillance
#6The German BND snoops traffic at DECIX. UK snoops on transatlantic cables. Everyone snoops.
Either we move to full e2e encryption or we organize democratically to tear down the modern Stasi.
Re: South African authorities admit to mass surveillance
#7Wasn't it 6 years ago when Snowden made public his revelations and Google said 'nope' and encrypted the lot? Who now sends traffic over these links and doesn't encrypt them? So, what value do the SA government have in intercepting these links now?
It took well over a decade for this acceptance to go from "conspiracy theory" to common sense in the tech community, and patches of cognitive dissonance still remain. What makes you think that opsec has adjusted so quickly, especially with nowhere straightforward to go? Consider that metadata-spewing HTTPS still passes for security.
Re: South African authorities admit to mass surveillance
#8Wasn't it 6 years ago when Snowden made public his revelations and Google said 'nope' and encrypted the lot? Who now sends traffic over these links and doesn't encrypt them? So, what value do the SA government have in intercepting these links now?
* Many applications still aren't encrypted by default, like IRC.
* If you have compromised a private key, you can get useful data from the cable intercept.
* If you can collect ciphertext today, and decrypt it tomorrow (with, say, quantum computers), the cable intercept is very useful.
Re: South African authorities admit to mass surveillance
#9Wasn't it 6 years ago when Snowden made public his revelations and Google said 'nope' and encrypted the lot? Who now sends traffic over these links and doesn't encrypt them? So, what value do the SA government have in intercepting these links now?
* Many applications still aren't encrypted by default, like IRC. * If you have compromised a private key, you can get useful data from the cable intercept. * If you can collect ciphertext today, and decrypt it tomorrow (with, say, quantum computers), the cable intercept is very useful.
IRC sure, but the big win is email.
Re: South African authorities admit to mass surveillance
#10> worrying is that the SSA has said that such surveillance and data collection is "common practice" globally I think if you believe that any major country is not intercepting all undersea fibre cable traffic within their reach or even beyond it then you’re being very naive. I can’t understand how this news would surprise anyone.
And if not for their own use, selling access to other players.