India splurges £100m on new mega internet snooping HQ India's clampdown on its netizens is set to continue after its government revealed it is setting up a National Cyber Co-ordination Centre to monitor all web traffic flowing through the country – in the name of national security. The Times of India had access to the minutes of a National Security Council Secretariat meeting …
In 2010, encryption was reported during six state wiretaps (out of 3,194 in the whole of the USA), but did not prevent officials from obtaining the plain text of the communications.[1]
(allegedly, 5 of these intercepts were using sh!t crypto and the sixth, whilst it was a correctly configured and hard encrypted system, was able to be covertly keylogged)[2]
Sources:
[1] Administrative Office of the US Courts Wiretap Reports 2010
[2] Surveillance or Security?: The Risks Posed by New Wiretapping Technologies by Susan Landau, Harvard. Jan 2011. ISBN-13: 978-0262015301 $20
10's of millions... if not more.. but that's just to fund the staff cars of the space program / nuclear boffins..
Unless, of course, by complete accident, some of that money has been diverted to hanging large concrete balls from gantries, to stop the poor from killing themselves on the way to work.
Nothing to see here, move along, local libdems will kick up a fuss if we decide to question blinkered spunking of taxpayers money on overseas aid.. etc etc...
Where's the box on my self-assessment form that lets me say where my tax goes?
It's a depressing thought that this thing is happening in just about every country worldwide, the UK included. Whatever governments say about the freedom social media brings, I suspect they're terrified (the Arab Spring; the August riots; etc.) . Look at China banning people registering on Twitter-like sites or Bill C-30 in Canada. Governments always use the same old excuses: national security, the criminals are ahead, etc. I sometimes wonder if crime & social unrest magically appeared only when the internet came into existence. Even in good old Blighty where Labour once had the Interception Modernisation Programme (which the now coalition partners criticised) we now have the Communications Capabilities Development Programme. Even things like gaming sessions will be recorded. And of course, it's not just governments. Companies like Google, Facebook, etc. have been harvesting our data. I doubt there's much we can do about this & I think anyone who has any kind of mobile phone or internet connected device has to accept that they're being spied on by someone all the time.
Draft emails ... really? Draft emails, which are saved locally. Because they are a draft. Because they aren't ready for sending yet. Right. Unless they think only web mail exists these days, but in that case that would just come under the regular traffic snooping surely.
No wonder Indian software is such "high" quality.
Most of the message they will catch will be of the form:
To Some Guy
Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah
Signed, Some Bozo.
Of course all the really interesting emails about extra-martial affairs and lolcats will be forwarded around the centre for "review".
Anyone want to take bets on when the first scandalous email is leaked from there?
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