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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!news.wildstar.net!cancer.vividnet.com!hunter.premier.net!news.mathworks.com!howland.erols.net!EU.net!news2.EUnet.fr!newsbr.eunet.fr!usenet From: fgm@osinet.fr (Frederic G. MARAND) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: TCP Encryption, part 2 Date: Mon, 30 Sep 1996 21:56:22 GMT Organization: Groupe SEDI / Agorus SA / OSI SARL / Lines: 26 Message-ID: <52piuo$14h@newsbr.eunet.fr> References: <Pine.BSF.3.91.960929121424.16142A-100000@darkstar> NNTP-Posting-Host: 193.107.196.155 X-Newsreader: Forte Free Agent 1.0.82 Charles Mott <cmott@srv.net> wrote: >If we consider the North American AMPS cell phone standard, all >conversations are available, in the clear, to anyone with an appropriate >hand held scanner. An analogous state of affairs exists for the great >majority of internet traffic. If you consider plain old snail mail, the same observations have been valid for a few centuries, and pretty little people have been bothered by it: the powers that be DO read some mail, they DO listen to some conversations, and then ? What the heck ? In some cases, it might even be legitimous for them to do so, in criminal matters. I think there is a pretty good example of why it does not really matter: the communist government in East Germany had a thought policy called Stasi, that was well-known for its large use of phone tapping and mail reading. It had thousands of folders on all people with some ideas in that country, it had the power a communist regim gives to thought control, and for all that it never could prevent dissidents from "dssidating", communicating with the western world. Think again: spies have a real boring time recording conversations, finding secrets, when the information is just as secret after it has been stolen, because no one is there to do anything about it.