How Secret Partners Expand NSA's Surveillance Dragnet 63
Advocatus Diaboli (1627651) writes It has already been widely reported that the NSA works closely with eavesdropping agencies in the United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia as part of the so-called Five Eyes surveillance alliance. But the latest Snowden documents show that a number of other countries, described by the NSA as "third-party partners," are playing an increasingly important role – by secretly allowing the NSA to install surveillance equipment on their fiber-optic cables. The NSA documents state that under RAMPART-A, foreign partners "provide access to cables and host U.S. equipment." This allows the agency to covertly tap into "congestion points around the world" where it says it can intercept the content of phone calls, faxes, e-mails, internet chats, data from virtual private networks, and calls made using Voice over IP software like Skype.
Re:Skype? Really? (Score:5, Informative)
Skype's problem isn't proprietary encryption.
If you recall, for a very long time, Skype used random clients as nodes to connect calls..
Microsoft bought Skype and, in 2012, released an update that ended this practice and forced everyone to go through MS controlled nodes.
Microsoft claimed this was for performance reasons, but everyone with two braincells immediately assumed it was for spying.
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/12/07/24/0039205/microsoft-wont-say-if-skype-is-secure-or-not-time-to-change [slashdot.org]
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/07/26/2243206/microsoft-makes-skype-easier-to-monitor [slashdot.org]
Skype's original design was intentionally restructured to give Microsoft the ability to intercept all communiciations.