Email tapping by ISPs, forwarder addresses, and crypto proxies

[Tyler Durden]

Variola:
You say a lotta good shit here, but you're really out of your area in this 
case. You seem to miss the basic points, and then fill in your blindspot 
with pure theoretical conjecture. Let me point out some of the lil' flaws in 
your thinking....


>
>With all due respect, you think Ft. Meade uses the same COTS crap
>as you are forced to deal with?  Bwah hah hah.

For some things, sure. Actually I know from first hand experience. (I've 
actually been in an NSA, DISA, and a few other experimental network nodes.) 
Lots of the equipment I saw was from the big vendors, most notably Lucent 
and Nortel. Somewhere deeper than I had access to, however, they almost 
certainly use special silicon.

>Gilmore et al used a bunch of old Sun Chassis for his & Kocher's
>DEScracker.  You think this is somehow more than 100 watts, in a
>diplo suitcase, nowadays?

OK, so you're saying that this suitcase takes in say 10 OC-192s, demuxes all 
of them down to the DS1 level (we're at 50,000 DS1s), demaps and unpacks the 
ATM cells, and then reassembles all of the packets therein? Questions:

1) How does this majic box store all that data?
2) I've been in dozens of COs myself, and have worked extensively with 
people who have spent (collectively speaking) centuries in them. They never 
saw such a magic box a you describe, and indeed would certainly know about 
someone trying to install one. Or perhaps the NSA has developed a cloaking 
device making the box invisible?
2) What silicon does it use? Are you saying that the government can do a LOT 
better than 0.13 microns these days? Somehow I doubt it. Look at the 
off-the-shelf SONET chip architectures. Sure, there's lots of stuff onboard 
that you wouldn't need for what you're talking about, but getting rid of 
that stuff would still put the most advanced chip lightyears behyind what 
you're talking about.
3) If the majic box doesn't store the data, how does it get it back to HQ? 
Telepathy? Or, does it use a bank of lasers that somehow are several orders 
of magnitude more efficient that off-the-shelf lasers? (And let us remember 
that there's a fundamental constraint with bulk optics..an optical 
multiplexer or ciculator can't be an order of magnitude smaller than the 
wavelength it will support.)

JA's comments about fiber exhaust are dead-on, and were not known to most of 
the Telecom Bubble participants. (Indicates the dude knows what he's talking 
about with respect to telecom.)

But dark fibers aren't a real concern. It would be easy to develop a DWDM 
system that operated over the L or M bands, "under" the C-band wavelengths 
used by a carrier. So the problem isn't the fiber, it's lighting it.

As for my comments about cable landings, I explicity stated that the splices 
back to VA were seen and known. And yes, I was in a position to know. 
(There's not a lot you can hide in a CO...it's not like they staff them with 
NSA agents or something.)

As for trolling, well when I do it I do it with friggin' style m'friend. But 
sometimes, the truth is so mundane it looks fairly boring. Sorry to 
dissappoint you. I'm going to have to confiscate your copy of "Deepness in 
the Sky"...

-TD

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