Re: (fwd) Re: WebTV & Encryption

[! Drive <drink@aa.net>]

>[This is a FORWARDED MESSAGE from comp.dcom.telecom]

>In article <telecom16.653.2@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Alan Bishop
><a@corp.webtv.net> wrote:
>
>Howdy.  I'm a software engineer at WebTV Networks.  I certainly don't
>speak for the company, but I can clear up some misunderstandings.
>
>dr@ripco.com (David Richards) writes:
>
[snip]
>
>The box talks to our proxy server over an encrypted channel (using
>TCP/IP).  This allows us to provide a better service to the user
>in several ways:
>
> - privacy for the user.  The number of places that someone could
>   snoop on a user's session are greatly reduced.  We should be
>   publishing a statement on user privacy in the near future
>   describing what we will and won't do with information in our
>   possession.  I believe it's designed to answer the same questions
>   as those posed in
>http://www.cdt.org/privacy/online_services/chart.html.
>   We use strong encryption, and as some of you are already aware,
>   we've been declared a munition by the US government, and the boxes
>   have a "do not export" stamp on them somewhere.
>
> - response time for common sites is more consistent.  The time to
>   connect to a common site is the time between a user's box and the proxy
>   server, not N different sites on the internet.
>
> - we transcode images and other media types.  For example, image
>   creators often make their images too detailed or store them in
>   a format that doesn't compress as well as it should.  We fix that
>   in the proxy before transmitting them over the slow link to the user.
>   It also means that if we want to support a media type, we don't
>   need a new client release: we just add it in the server and convert
>   it to an existing one.
>
[snip]