Re: government eavesdropping

[Brian Wallingford <brian () meganet net>]

: > So what is the real story here?  Is all, most, some of our
: > international Internet traffic being intercepted by various
: > governments?  Is it only international traffic that is at issue or is
: > domestic traffic within the US subject to routine eavesdropping
: > without a court order?
: > 
: The US government has had listening devices at the MAEs/NAPs for years.  
: They have also patented techniques for sorting and classifying 
: conversations, which appear to be applicable to Internet traffic.
: 
: As for other governments, haven't you heard Moscowitz's Chrysler story?
: 
: 
: > Have I been misleading people?
: > 
: While Merit has done an admirable job internally of organizing its 
: networks, so that customer traffic doesn't pass by client machines 
: and would be difficult to monitor, other ISPs and companies are not 
: so diligent.

Specifically, what have Merit, and presumably yourself done that any
reasonably clued ISP hasn't?  Aside from responsible subneting, and
standard non-intrusive filtering, what can be done?  It seems to me that
beyond that, the burden of safeguarding data falls on the end-user.

-brian