I'm glad "nobody" thinks I'm a nym for being a good eight hours:fifty-nine minutes out of step and having lowered my reputation in his/her eyes. Now I'll ask my question again, which apparantly got lost in the collective groan of my stale post: Are there ways for someone with access to modify router tables to constantly create alternate paths at other routers which would serve to end-around any such snoops? This question is now offered in the context of the _hypothetical_situation_ of there being snoops out here in the first place. Later I'll ask about sniffing for sniffers. One reason for this post is the fact that certain ambitious bureaucrats here in Vermont have decided to build, own and control the internet, connecting governments, schools and a few businesses. There is no encryption in use by the government agencies and they have let the school hackers and teachers on now to share the T-1 backbone with the state agencies and contractors (medicaid/EDS) carrying personal information collected and managed by state government. These [ir]responsible parties refuse to provide any documentation requested under public records law demonstrating that a security plan or practice is in place. The high schools are offered 56K circuits for $5K/annual and a share of a gov'ment network manager who wont answer his e-mail and doesn't know where to begin looking for copies of it, when it too is requested under our public records laws. Our governor stated in his address to the legislature that these 56K lines will let an "unlimited number of students access the internet simultaneously". Anybody got a bridge? I sure would like to hear from some folks who would be willing to aid in paying close attention, discussing the implications and appropriateness of encryption technologies for this situation, aiding in testing for sniffers, etc. This request is offered as an attempt to keep a step ahead of the public/private competition, privacy accident-waiting-to-happen and the surveillance potential/practice of such a beast. If someone who feels strongly that this is off-topic for this list makes that case I'll carry my inquiry elsewhere, after a little cross-fire, of course. I even went back and just now read the "Welcome to" message to see whether these issues fall withih the scope. I can hardly find anyone who even cares about the fact that our legislature relies on the executive branch gov-net managers for their port/connection on the internet router. They also rely on the executive branch for troubleshooting their novell LAN. Does anyone else see a separation of powers issue or privacy issue here? Note that I cc: the speaker, who cares but doesn't yet grasp the implications. Feel free to write him directly. His name is Michael Obuchowski, Obe for short, <speaker@leg.state.vt.us>, tell him I sent you. At this point offering encryption software to school age kids is a whole lot easier than convincing bureaucrats that it's a good practice. This wont solve the problem of poor practice by government though. Unfortunately this will also likely frighten the school network techies, administrators and school board members. Anybody have a copy of any good, tight, discovery orders which can be useful in gaining court ordered access to prevent destruction of evidence and for combing the electronic files and e-mail of these accountable public servants to demonstrate that they don't know what there doing? (responses to the legal points by private e-mail please. Do I come across as litigious?) The Boston Globe did a good front page story a week or ten days ago entitled "e-mail as evidence". Mostly the story was relating to lawyers and consultants making big money aiding corporations to assure that the really damaging, unencrypted e-mail is thoroughly scrubbed from all systems. Back to where this started: Eating my tasty crow gives rise to another question relating to the timing and continuity of these threads: How did the first responder on the RE: 134.222.9.1, Simon Spero, reply at 10:48 pm on Nov. 4 to Anonymous' posting of 7:19AM on Nov 5? Which way is this thing spinnin? Stephen Whitaker P. O. Box 1331 Montpelier, Vermont 05601-1331 802.479.6118