GCHQ taps fibre-optic cables for secret access to world's communications
1–10 of 51 posts
Re: GCHQ taps fibre-optic cables for secret access to world's communications
#2The TL;DR is, quote:
"The GCHQ mass tapping operation has been built up over five years by attaching intercept probes to transatlantic fibre-optic cables where they land on British shores carrying data to western Europe from telephone exchanges and internet servers in north America."
Re: GCHQ taps fibre-optic cables for secret access to world's communications
#3The TL;DR is, quote: "The GCHQ mass tapping operation has been built up over five years by attaching intercept probes to transatlantic fibre-optic cables where they land on British shores carrying data to western Europe from telephone exchanges and internet servers in north America."
A couple more eyebrow-raising tidbits:
"One key innovation has been GCHQ's ability to tap into and store huge volumes of data drawn from fibre-optic cables for up to 30 days so that it can be sifted and analysed. That operation, codenamed Tempora, has been running for some 18 months."
"UK officials could also claim GCHQ "produces larger amounts of metadata than NSA"."
Re: GCHQ taps fibre-optic cables for secret access to world's communications
#4"... This includes recordings of phone calls, the content of email messages, entries on Facebook and the history of any internet user's access to websites ..."
Isn't Facebook using SSL these days?
Re: GCHQ taps fibre-optic cables for secret access to world's communications
#5"... This includes recordings of phone calls, the content of email messages, entries on Facebook and the history of any internet user's access to websites ..." Isn't Facebook using SSL these days?
Not by default on every account. I have recently changed settings on couple of my friends account to force SSL.
Re: GCHQ taps fibre-optic cables for secret access to world's communications
#6This being more or less the entire stated mission of GCHQ, I wonder who's actually surprised by this revelation.
Re: GCHQ taps fibre-optic cables for secret access to world's communications
#7"This was done under secret agreements with commercial companies, described in one document as 'intercept partners'. […] some companies have been paid for the cost of their co-operation and GCHQ went to great lengths to keep their names secret. They were assigned 'sensitive relationship teams' and staff were urged in one internal guidance paper to disguise the origin of 'special source' material in their reports for fear that the role of the companies as intercept partners would cause 'high-level political fallout'."
Re: GCHQ taps fibre-optic cables for secret access to world's communications
#8This is disgraceful.
Re: GCHQ taps fibre-optic cables for secret access to world's communications
#9"This was done under secret agreements with commercial companies, described in one document as 'intercept partners'. […] some companies have been paid for the cost of their co-operation and GCHQ went to great lengths to keep their names secret. They were assigned 'sensitive relationship teams' and staff were urged in one internal guidance paper to disguise the origin of 'special source' material in their reports for…
It's nice to see that giving all their users data to the spy agencies is a business model for these companies.
Re: GCHQ taps fibre-optic cables for secret access to world's communications
#10"... This includes recordings of phone calls, the content of email messages, entries on Facebook and the history of any internet user's access to websites ..." Isn't Facebook using SSL these days?
Not by default on every account. I have recently changed settings on couple of my friends account to force SSL.
What is the current understanding regarding the crackability of SSL?