On 01/10/2012 01:11 PM, Jillian C. York wrote:
No, but it's certainly useful when putting the surveillance in perspective. Just as many of the Egyptians who later accessed their files from State Security offices had never been detained or questioned, it's quite possible that much of Syria's surveillance is for surveillance's sake.
I imagine that the Narus systems likely running in Egypt will have in impact in a number of years. Just the same as the snort IDS at the edge of Syria. These are databases that over time become more and more valuable. When smart people learn about them, smart people will do much much scarier things than the original creators of these systems. I think it's really important to keep perspective about perspective. We're still around fifteen days away from a full year of revolution in Egypt. I'm sure we haven't seen everything yet and I'm certain that what we have seen, we probably don't understand very well. If the Egyptians were using Narus or Cisco interception, would we know? I've been told that the Cisco interception is used for arrests, so what do we make of that?
Which is not to say the recommendations are wrong - they're not. But the full picture includes both the reality of the surveillance systems and the reality of how authorities are using their capabilities.
Sure, I think we agree on the first point. Additionally, I'd add that different authorities use their capabilities in myriad of ways. We do not know the full reality, only the capabilities. By being cautious, we're trying to mitigate many of the possibilities even in the worst of actualities. The irony is that for internet chatting and web browsing, I think we've got an ironclad solution; where as for phones, we're basically all doomed - from billing to content. All the best, Jacob _______________________________________________ liberationtech mailing list liberationtech@lists.stanford.edu Should you need to change your subscription options, please go to: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech If you would like to receive a daily digest, click "yes" (once you click above) next to "would you like to receive list mail batched in a daily digest?" You will need the user name and password you receive from the list moderator in monthly reminders. Should you need immediate assistance, please contact the list moderator. Please don't forget to follow us on http://twitter.com/#!/Liberationtech ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE