Hi,

Why do we assume that government spies will go to such lengths to get at an individual's data, when a downloaded root-kit on the target PC suffices?

Because some governments like spying on Gmail accounts. I would agree with you if your goal is to snoop on a dissident, there are easier procedures there. But if you want to detect dissent in your population, Gmail, Facebook and Twitter is what you want to check. Ralph -- Dipl.-Inform. Ralph Holz I8: Network Architectures and Services Technische Universitdt M|nchen http://www.net.in.tum.de/de/mitarbeiter/holz/ _______________________________________________ cryptography mailing list cryptography@randombit.net http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography ----- 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