Privacy from whom?

[Bill Wood]

On Sun, 06 Aug 2000 16:13:07 +0000, John Drabik wrote:

>
>On Sun, 06 Aug 2000 17:56:07 -0400 (EDT), Ralph Cohen wrote:
>
>>If I want to send someone something in
>>absolute confidence that I am afraid might be compromised by having my
>>email intercepted, I simply choose another method.
>
>Internet e-mail, by default, passes through a large number of
>intermediate sites that are uncontrolled.  Faxes and letters, while
>still attackable by the government or monopolies (such as the phone
>company) do not suffer from quite the same problem.  ANYBODY can
>target your e-mail, or that of 10,000 other people, as desired.  To
>go after you FAX or private mail, they have to spend a lot more time
>and effort, infiltrate the phone company or post office, etc. 
>Nowhere near the same.
>
>> Same thing goes for
>>faxes or phone calls - I don't have a scrambler on either of them,
>>either.
>
>But again, it is highly unlikely that anybody other than the direct
>recipients would hear your phone call (ok, so a bug is possible, but
>they still have to target *you* directly, and there's a limit as to
>how much one person, or one small group, can infiltrate your private
>communications channels.  E-mail is not a private channel by any
>stretch.  Phone calls result in "he said/she said" (unless someone
>wants to admit they illegally wire-tapped your phones - the Lewinsky
>scandal comes to mind, but Willey wasn't particularly bright).  FAXs
>are intermediate - not as bad as e-mail, but not as off-the-cuff as
>phone, and thus probably not as defensible, I would think.
>
>John
>
>
+++++

Here's what actually happened during the cold war.

The Soviets put microwave snooping receiver in apartments near
the fone company's central microwave towers and recorded
everything. The tapes were sent to sites where the audio
streams were assembled and listened to by hundreds of people
listening for key words, such as 'stealth' or 'B2', etc. A hit
caused the msg to be dumped in full and analyzed. (this from
scary counterespionage lectures). Also, the NSA has FAX
monitoring hardware, and I assume the Soviets did, too.

I don't know if this was done selectively (say, from only the
Lockheed Corp, etc), but it was done. The US tried to stop the
practice legally, but couldn't.

w3


w3

"If Texas seceded from the Union, 
I'd move there tomorrow."

Walter Williams