patrick.net

from another post..

When your a nations leader or member of parliament (Congress) or cabinet.. your personal communication devices are confiscated as was Obama's Blackberry and given a far more secure Govt issued devices backed by govt telecom system.

The Germans already know this since they been dealing with the KGB..and while the USSR is gone, the spying by the Russians, Chinese, French and others hasnt.

adding...

... all of this is no more than the Chinese creating distortions and distractions from
real issue of global espionage they have perpetrated in the past few years. It should be obvious by now we, in the USA, are the only power with the HW/SW and knowledge to stop the Chinese abuse of the internet. But as long these distractions continue our global web continues to be used by foreign espionage and organized crime and we are all prey to their actions.

B-B-But, the NSA said it was to keep the world safe from Terry Wrists.

thunderlips11 says

B-B-But, the NSA said it was to keep the world safe from Terry Wrists.

You rather have the Chinese Intel services take over your PC and use it as a BOT for what ever reason they might call on it... how about the organized crime rampant on the internet.

You know of anyone else outside the USA who can go toe to toe with these organizations.

thomaswong.1986 says

thunderlips11 says

B-B-But, the NSA said it was to keep the world safe from Terry Wrists.

You rather have the Chinese Intel services take over your PC and use it as a BOT for what ever reason they might call on it...

If you actually understood computer security you'd realize how irrelevant such an event would be.

Keep in mind taking over my (or another) PC gives one no further access to information beyond what that PC (or person, via their computer) can access in the 1st place, with the exception of adding a general single layer of obfuscation (which is nothing). Taking over a single PC (or hundreds of, lol, give me a minute) is for amateurs, warez peddlers and banner advertisers :/

Now taking over a PC (or a data ingress/egress point like a cell phone, switch, router, a DB server or a server that's connected to the DB) that has access to actual data that matters is another story. Now we're talking.

There are two basic areas of information gathering for the NSA.

One is the area of non-combatants (irrelevants such as ourselves) and the other is of actual persons of interest.

The real problem with the NSA is they've been collecting data on both fronts, which is a massive privacy issue. There's the question of should they pursue targets of interest (probably) but should they also then ignore (not collect) the rest (also probably). It should be pretty obvious that no, they shouldn't.

It seems that the NSA isn't good enough to target and collect, instead they decided to collect all and filter. They're amateurs coupled with the fact that's it's a mind-boggling amount of information. This is the fundamental issue.

Do we give up our privacy for them to pursue the .05%? That's really the question.