Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down

[David Wagner]

Sampo Syreeni  wrote:
>Rather it's the fact that the Big
>Brother doesn't have the necessary total funds, and so doesn't listen into
>a considerable proportion of calls as a whole.

Yet.

As far as we know.

:-)

I agree it's an economic issue, and law enforcement doesn't seem to
listen in on a considerable proportion of calls as a whole at the moment.
But what happens to costs in the future?  Remember, it takes 10 years
to get any change to the cellphone/telecommunications infrastructure
deployed, so it pays to think ahead.

By the way, what's the story with those SIGINT planes supposedly
advertised as being able to fly over a city and capture communications
from the whole metropolitan area?  John Young had a pointer on his web
site at one point.  Do you suppose they might snarf up all the cellphone
traffic they can find, en masse?  What proportion of calls would that be,
as a fraction of the whole?  One wonders whether your confidence in the
security of cellphone traffic is well-founded.