Re: Who Me? Paranoid? Naaaah...

[Marc Horowitz <marc@Athena.MIT.EDU>]

>> That way, we would no longer rely on the Internet, which, unless I am
>> completely off the mark, basically still exists at the pleasure of
>> ARPA and could be completely infiltrated and controlled by the NSA for
>> all we know.

You are completely off the mark.  Much of the Internet is privately
owned and controlled, and most of what is government controlled
(including the backbone) is controlled by the NSF, not DARPA.  What is
military controlled is essentially an island.  None of our packets
traverse that part of the net.  (Of course, the NSA could still be
watching our packets, and there is much speculation that they actively
do so on international links.  But the domestic links are not owned by
the DoD directly.)

And what parallel universe would you use.  The Telcos?  The FBI
wiretap proposal should show you how good an idea that is.  Unless you
want to run your own physically secure wire (intractable), you need
encryption, so you might as well use the Internet.  Even if it is
NSA-controlled, which I doubt.

		Marc