Re:NSA admits listening to U.S. phone calls without warrants
by cpeterso on Sunday June 16, 2013 @02:47AM
(#5887699)
> I'm not seeing how we get from there to the contents of email. To have the email of arbitrary Americans without a warrant, the NSA would need direct access to the servers that run Google Mail.
Couldn't the NSA sniff packets the major internet hubs like MAE-West and MAE-East? I assume most email is sent as cleartext after it leaves Google's servers. Even if intermediate hops were encrypted, the NSA could easily man-in-the-middle any servers they wanted. I'm sure CAs like VeriSign would be happy to do their patriotic duty issuing forged certificates.
Couldn't the NSA sniff packets the major internet hubs like MAE-West and MAE-East? I assume most email is sent as cleartext after it leaves Google's servers. Even if intermediate hops were encrypted, the NSA could easily man-in-the-middle any servers they wanted. I'm sure CAs like VeriSign would be happy to do their patriotic duty issuing forged certificates.