Would you choose:
Tempora: Latin Word Study Tool
Tempora mutantur: “Times change.”
Tempora: GCHQ taps fibre-optic cables for secret access to world’s communications (by Ewen MacAskill, Julian Borger, Nick Hopkins, Nick Davies and James Ball)
?
All three are “correct” search results but only the last one, about GCHQ, carries a security lesson.
From the post:
Britain’s spy agency GCHQ has secretly gained access to the network of cables which carry the world’s phone calls and internet traffic and has started to process vast streams of sensitive personal information which it is sharing with its American partner, the National Security Agency (NSA).
The sheer scale of the agency’s ambition is reflected in the titles of its two principal components: Mastering the Internet and Global Telecoms Exploitation, aimed at scooping up as much online and telephone traffic as possible. This is all being carried out without any form of public acknowledgement or debate.
One key innovation has been GCHQ’s ability to tap into and store huge volumes of data drawn from fibre-optic cables for up to 30 days so that it can be sifted and analysed. That operation, codenamed Tempora, has been running for some 18 months.
In order for the Brits or NSA to intercept electronic traffic it first has to be where they can intercept it. (BTW, shunning U.S. web services, a la Germany, may make you feel good but won’t protect your data.)
If your data leaves your system, by radiation, hacking or intentional transfer across a public network, it risks being intercepted.
To abuse an old saying:
Security begins at home.
PS: Has anyone thought to ask about interception of bank network traffic?