Email tapping by ISPs, forwarder addresses, and crypto proxies

Tyler Durden camera_lumina at hotmail.com
Tue Jul 27 12:52:40 PDT 2004


Variola wrote...

>>While this cannot be discounted in toto, the tech comes to them from
>>academia (most of the time), so generally, if you are widely read,
you'll
>>have a pretty good idea of what's *possible*.  You are likely dead-on
>>accurate about the fabs though.

>In the *public* lit.

Well, perhaps but perhaps not. Burst-mode signaling, transceivers, and 
networking technology are a good example. If you see DISA, NSA, and DARPA 
all working with the acknoledged experts inthe academic field, and if you 
see them spending $$$ on burst-mode testbeds, then it's clear that there are 
some issues they haven't solved. Of course, they may not be the issues WE 
think they are, but you get some idea.

What that also hints at is that they can't actually always backhaul 
EVERYTHING. Their interest in burst-mode indicates they still view bandwidth 
as an obstacle (and not dark fiber, but actual lit bandwidth). Of course, 
their bandwidth "problem" is probably at orders of magnitude greater than 
we'd consider a problem, but their continued interest in burst mode probably 
indicates there are times when they have huge amounts of data that needs to 
get through i a short amount of time, and they don't want to clog up a 
channel.


>Fair 'nuff.  You know that 5 year predictions are too conservative, and
>20 year predictions too liberal.  Ask Orwell.

Well, there's the famous Adaptive Optics story centered around bringing 
Manua Kea online. When the Manua Kea designers were trying to solve some of 
the big issues ca. 1988, the military (as part of one of their dual-use 
programs) declassified Laser Guidestar research they had done in 1962!

In other cases you can, however, take a reasonably good guess. Remember, 
during the bubble there was billions poured in by the private sector in 
making lasers more efficient, smaller, etc...There just happen to be 
physical limitations. But I have zero doubt that the NSA can't make a laser 
that is siginificantly more efficient than what I can buy off the shelf.


>You think subs are just toys?

Actually, this is a most interesting point. Those cables are not merely 
giant rubber hoses running around on the sea floor...the telecom equipment 
is actually powered via an electrical layer in the cable sheath. And then 
remember that there are lots of fibers in any one of those cables, and that 
the signal therein might easily need to be amplified due to splice losses. 
So that Sub (which I know exists) must really be something to see. Almost 
makes me want to join the dark side!

(Oh yeah, come to think of it I did actually work on an NSA project that 
examined some undersea optical component failures out of one of their 
networks. From the components we looked at, I can only guess what their 
network topology must have been (OC-3 ATM, BTW), but I can only take vague 
guesses as to what it must do).

-TD

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