Deutsche Telekom Moves Email Traffic In-Country In Wake of PRISM 180
kdryer39 writes "Germany's leading telecom provider announced on Friday that it will only use German servers to handle any email traffic over its systems, citing privacy concerns arising from the recent PRISM leak and its 'public outrage over U.S. spy programs accessing citizens' private messages.' In a related move, DT has also announced that they will be providing email services over SSL to further secure their customers' communications. Sandro Gaycken, a professor of cyber security at Berlin's Free University, said 'This will make a big difference...Of course the NSA could still break in if they wanted to, but the mass encryption of emails would make it harder and more expensive for them to do so.'"
Re:so.... (Score:4, Informative)
Dear America
We like Canada more than you
Sincerely
Everyone else.
Re:This makes sense (Score:5, Informative)
Germany is one of the hotspots for Boundless Informant [theguardian.com]. It appears that the US spies on Germany as much as it does on China.
It makes somewhat less sense given that the US spies on Germany with considerable assistance from the German BND [spiegel.de]...
I can understand why Germans would Not want their emails passing through American control; but it looks like they'll have to clean house if they want to be able to do that just by going domestic.
Re:This makes sense (Score:2, Informative)
germans like to keep a short leash on their own, though. try to buy a usb modem with sim card - passport required. wifi at a hotel ? username and password you have to sign for.
fuck you germany, you are no better despite the fuss angela might throw.
No more NSA splitter? (Score:5, Informative)
From the EU "Temporary Committee on the ECHELON Interception System"
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//NONSGML+REPORT+A5-2001-0264+0+DOC+PDF+V0//EN&language=EN [europa.eu]
How will SSL be "harder and more expensive" for the NSA/GCHQ if a friendly German agency just hands over the keys again?
Seems like the West German post war telco system was designed to track Soviet/East German contacts via a few central locations.
Why would the US need to "break in" if they where in on the design and have a great generational working relationship with German telcos and intelligence agency staff?
i.e. "still doesn't prevent governments from getting information"
Re:This makes sense (Score:5, Informative)
SSL is enabled by flipping a switch, but it offers no real protection when some three letter agency can surf your mail server farm with their fiber back door.
There is a lot of posturing going on in that article.
Re:so.... (Score:2, Informative)
I find it a beautiful irony that the country that invented the gestapo and the stasi finds the nsa a little bit too much :)
Perhaps they learned from it?
Re:This makes sense (Score:2, Informative)
Have you lived in a cave for the past five years? GPUs are where it's at for hashing algorithms. A thousand SIMD cores with a generic instruction set to perform all sorts of math? The only thing that could do better right now is if you designed the ASIC yourself.
Re: Pointless (Score:3, Informative)
I suppose you could read the wikipedia article, but the EU report on ECHELON has a nice section (10.7) outlining the known history of state-involved industrial espionage: http://cryptome.org/echelon-ep-fin.htm#10 [cryptome.org]
Re:This makes sense (Score:4, Informative)
If you want tens of thousands of video cards, you are going to have to make a deal with a manufacturer.
Yeah...no. If I wanted 5000-10000 video cards tomorrow, I'd call up Ingram Micro and say "this is what I want" and they'd get me X pricing per-unit in bulk(orders over 6k units get special pricing). I *have* ordered quantities of things like HDD's, and videocards in the 2500-5000 unit range in the last decade. I couldn't have 8000 cards tomorrow, but I could have every videocard in every warehouse that they own in North America for me in three days, expedited.